#28 - JANUARY 2010 by CyberMedia (I) Ltd

/Rs 30

JANUARY 2010

Vol 3 / Issue 04 / Jan 10

DL(S)-17/3314/2008-09-2010 DARE

RNI No.DELENG/2007/22197. Posting Date: 5th & 6th of every month. Posted at Lodi Road HPO.

Subscriber copy. Not for sale

POPULATION ISSUES & THE OPPORTUNITIES THEY HIDE

Population issues & the opportunities they hide Customer proﬁling and rating services Business of medical oxygen 10 sectors to be affected by the Dubai crisis Status of print media in digital times

VOLUME 3 ISSUE 04

18 alternatives to YouTube Labor reforms: the need of the hour 24 must-haves for your business website

entrepreneur of the month/

Ranjan Chopra, Team Computers investor of the month/

Chandrasekar Kandasamy, ePlanet Ventures columns/ Inflation: the enemy within An entrepreneur’s new year resolutions Strategies for a new startup The brand harmony 100 pages including cover

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INTRODUCING THE BEST

POWER MOVE A BUSINESS CAN MAKE

Forget about acquisitions and mergers for a moment and think about your electricity and all that you rely on your computer for: daily computing, financial details, critical business related information, archives, internet access, and more. Increasingly, computers are the hub for managing our business. And more people rely on APC UPS to protect their hardware and data than any other brand. Why is APC the world's best selling power protection? For 20 years, we have pioneered power protection technology. Our Legendary Reliability® enables you to save your data, protect your hardware, and prevent downtime. It also guards against a fluctuating power supply. APC has a complete line of power protection solutions to suit a range of business applications.

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BOARD OF ADVISORS C K Prahalad

University of Michigan

N R Narayanamurthy

Chief Mentor, Infosys

Kanwal Rekhi

56 Cover Story

Chairman, TiE

Romesh Wadhwani Chairman & President, Wadhwani Foundation Gururaj ‘Desh’ Deshpande

There are huge business opportunities that can be unlocked if these problems can be tackled, even marginally. It is high time that entrepreneurs made an attempt at tackling them

Chairman, Sycamore Networks

Saurabh Srivastava Chairman, Indian Venture Capital Association Kiran Mazumdar Shaw R Gopalakrishnan

Chairman & MD, Biocon Executive Director, Tata Sons

Philip Anderson

Professor of Entrepreneurship, INSEAD

Shyam Malhotra Editor-in-Chief Abraham Mathew President Krishna Kumar Group Editor

ANALYSTS Aman Malik Binesh Kutty Vimarsh Bajpai Vivek Kumar

OPERATIONS Ajay Dhoundiyal Product Manager Prasanna Srivastava Product Manager VIjay Rana Design Anil John Photography

SALES & MA Jaideep Mario Gabriel Ankur Kalia Abhinav Trivedi Baijau Abraham Kingshuk Sircar

MARKETING Associate VP West North North South South-East Asia

Population issues & the opportunities they hide

PRINT & CIRCULATION SERVICES Rachna Garga VP T Srirengan GM, Print Services Sudhir Arora Senior Manager Circulation Pooja Bharadwaj Assistant Manager, Subscriptions Sarita Shridhar Assistant Manager, Reader Service Printed and published by Pradeep Gupta. Owner, CyberMedia (India) Ltd. Printed at International Print-O-Pack Limited, B-204-206, Okhla Industrial Area, Phase 1, New Delhi-20 Published from D-74, Panchsheel Enclave, New Delhi-17. Editor: Krishna Kumar. Distributors in India: Mirchandani & Co., Mumbai. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced by any means without prior written permission. BANGALORE 205, 2nd Floor, # 73, Shree Complex, St.Johns Road, Tel: 43412333 CHENNAI 5B, 6th Floor, Gemini Parsn Apts, 599 Mount Road, Tel: 28221712

16 strategy Customer profiling and rating services Having burnt their fingers in the economic slowdown, credit and risk cover providers are now quite wary of borrowers.

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100 pages including cover 4

contest 49 Write a business idea The idea can be as crazy as you wish, but should somehow link to the picture

JANUARY 2010 | CONTENTS | DARE.CO.IN

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DARE.CO.IN

strategy

50 investor of the month

24 must-haves for your biz website 34 Status of print media in digital times 40

Chandrasekar Kandasamy

YouTube Is Not The Only One! 68

ePlanet Ventures

Make the most of business events 80

from the blogs

Kandasamy shares his insights into the world of funding.

All about Indian trains in just 7 web sites 26 Air travel: online takes the cake 27

blogs/columns 24 opportunities

Business of medical oxygen

The ever-increasing demand of medical oxygen has opened doors for new players in this business.

society The business of Pashmina 54 A key-maker & her enterprise 88

Paranjoy Guha Thakurta 14 Anurag Batra 20 Vijay Anand 44 Rupin Jayal 72

events TES 2009, Mumbai 38 ITIC by IET 79 ICICI Knowledge Forum 84 Startup Saturday 96

32 entrepreneur of the month

Ranjan Chopra Team Computers

others Exchange 8 Feedback 12 Ten sectors of the Indian economy that will be affected by the Dubai debt repayment crisis 77

Chopra talks about his entrepreneurial journey, successes, challenges, strategies, and more... DARE.CO.IN | CONTENTS | JANUARY 2010 5

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NOVEMBER 2009 | COLOMN | DARE.CO.IN

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blogs/edit

how do you determine your price tag?

he other day I was talking to an entrepreneur on how he prices his products. He had an interesting insight to offer me. I price my

stuff close to where the costliest in the market is, he confided. And there I was expecting the low down on his costing mechanisms, bill of material and much more! Why do you do it that way, I asked. Why donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t you link it to your actual costs? Because I do not want to come across as cheap, he confided. One of the biggest dilemmas faced by businesses is how much to price their products for. Which is that sweet spot at which the queue of buyers will not end, but above which the queue will simply dry up? Obviously, there is no simple formula that can tell you that point. Also, in a world that often looks at the price tag to determine brand value, there is no rule that your price should be a function of your costs or that you should price your product such that more people will buy it; or even that prices should be the same anywhere. There is no rule even that there should be a price for your product. There are may who give away their products for free either as a trial or to sell add ons and services at a price. Which is the model that fits your requirements the best?

/Krishna Kumar DARE.CO.IN | BLOGS | JANUARY 2010 7

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Exchange Submit exchange requests at: website: http://www.dare.co.in/ marketplace.htm OR email: dare@cybermedia. co.in or SMS ‘DARE <your msg>’ to 56677

hirendra Pratap Singh is a social entrepreneur and founder president of Milaan. He was looking for investors, partners and mentors for the project. Response Could I have more info on this project. I am based out of Hyderabad. Swathi Pabbisetty

antosh Kumar had been a regular reader of DARE magazine. He was looking forward to pre-seed funds, mentorship and funding. Response I would like to know some things. What type of handicrafts are you planning? Where will you source this from? What is the budget investment you are looking at? What is the expected profit? Murali

andip was looking for mentoring and guidance for implementing his ideas related to rural/ agricultural sector. Response Hello! Please let me know more about your idea. I am interested to help you. We are presently in the irrigation business. If interested, do revert. Kushal Parmar

tul Srivastava had started an HR consultancy firm “Effective People”, to provide growth and change management, professional training and outbound experiential learning programs after spending around three decades in various corporate organizations. He wanted to interact with entrepreneurs in the same field, or any other field, who may be interested. Response May I know the proposition exactly? Jasmin Khatri

umit Agarwal wanted to start a food venture in Gurgaon-DelhiNCR region. Response I would be interested in starting a food venture with you, Sumit. I am currently working & residing in Noida. Tiju Thomas

avi S. had a mango kernel processing industry and had designed a mango stone shredder machine. Response Nice to know that you are into mango kernel processing and willing to help people interested in the trade, which is really great. Please let me know the details and the minimum investment, and breakeven period. Please also mail your contact number. We would like to visit you before proceeding further. Pardhasaradhi

shutosh Naik was an independent web and graphics consultant. He wanted to start an all graphics and web solutions company for corporate organizations and small businesses. Response What will be your concept? I am an electronics and telecomm engineer. Have you already started your company? Govinda Agarwal

e have a unique portal that caters to the wedding industry. We were featured twice on NDTV. The media has appreciated our services on innumerable occasions. We are looking for mergers with bigger players or funding to take us to the next level. Association and alliances from firms that can lead us to funding are welcome. We aren’t generating revenues. Traffic is around 800 visits and around 15 registrations per day.

JANUARY 2010 | EXCHANGE | DARE.CO.IN

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We expect more information from the respondents (their background, what they look for etc). This will help us to determine if wavelengths match. Dr Natesh Babu

conduct a 40-hour course on the Internet as an LVC—live virtual classroom. All you need is an Internet (256kbps or above) enabled PC with a headset to participate in English medium of instruction. Ask for a free demo session today by sending me a mail. Vijay Kumar

e are a travel services provider from Pune with a focus on leisure tours. We intend to create innovative tours thereby giving our clients different experiences than conventional holidays. Goa, though a very popular and conventional tourist destinations, is one of the top destinations we are looking to promote. We are looking or associates who can provide homestays in traditional Goan houses and offer a day of culinary showcase and lessons comprising of authentic Goan goods. Siddharth Gurjar

am an IT project manager with an MNC in Bangalore and have nine years of experience. I specialize in setting up operations and have setup operations, stabilized them and implemented processes for delivering projects out of Mexico, US and India. I currently handle a portfolio of over 2 million USD. I have been working on a business proposal and have done

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all the required due diligence for this. I am currently in the process of setting up the core team for this venture. I am in need of funds to kick-start this venture This venture revolves around setting up of relaxation zones across India in malls and other places that attract high foot fall. Concept of relaxation zone is new to India and has a huge potential. This venture is very easy to scale-up and rollout across the country and the cost of setup involved is very low. Please let me know if anyone from the VC/angel community is excited. I will share all the details and we can take this forward together P. Vivek

set up small businesses. Currently, though we have over 5,000 applications asking for help, we do not have enough funds to initiate the projects. I am looking for people who can help fund the projects. Mukesh Mehta

e have a play school/preschool concept with daywise curriculum. We are looking for a channel partner to promote franchiser/franchisee module. Those with 300-400 sq ft office space or who are ready to start a play school in Chennai, Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi can become our channel partner. Periasamy S.

have been involved in evolving and running several businesses that have a wide social (especially rural) footprint. My present venture is a project called ‘SoyFit,’ under which we have established a complete system of decentralized production of soya-based health products in geographically spread out micro-industries (called ‘franchisees’), under the same raw material, quality standards and brand. Extensive training, technical support, marketing support and hand-holding is available. The project in its simplest form, requires an investment of Rs 6-8 lakh from a franchisee in typical Bcities, and gives back a net profit of Rs 1 lakh if operated on 30 percent installed capacity. We currently have five units operational in North India and are expanding to another ten by November 2009. We wish to scale it up to forty units across India by December 2009. The whole project is bankable and especially designed with youth employment in mind. Health foods have a good future present and market due to rising health awareness. At a later date, we intend to involve more youth for marketing of this product line under micro-financing project ‘Kaamyaab Yuva’. We would like to get in touch with small entrepreneurs willing to set up franchisee units in their areas, enablers of youth employment, angel investors, and NGOs who think they can carry this project further. Param Deep Singh

am planning to launch a start-up, which is into Retail services or Consulting. Are there any companies or individuals in this business in India? If you are interested to send me suggestions or want to partner, please get in touch. Shrinivas M Bakale

e have a business in the men’s garment section, which has a very good growth potential. We are distributing our franchises across India. We are interested in contacting franchisers as well as investors. Manish

am a manager with Pragati Ek Kadam Welfare Society. My NGO works for improving the livelihood of the rural poor by helping them

i, I am looking for a bamboo business to start here in the US. I have ten acres and planning to propagate and plant five acres

JANUARY 2010 | EXCHANGE | DARE.CO.IN

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to see how it will do. I need ideas and opportunities to help me. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Eddie

the business to guide me. I am doing my side of the research. Please help me out in this. Nandhakumar B.S.

am a regular reader of DARE. I am a CA intending to set-up a firm and looking for like-minded CA professionals to join hands. Those interested can contact me. Kindly send your profile if you don’t mind. We are a firm of four partners looking for more partners. Sudhir Taori

am looking up for sponsorship for my newly established NGO which is in India .The society seeks to aid in conserving forest and wildlife, mostly in the deprived areas. I am looking forward to hearing a response from you. Naved Khan

am a fresher in BE (electrical and electronics), waiting for my TCS call letter. My aim is to start a company based on white LED and solar cells with my friend after three years. I want to meet somebody who can give me a clear picture about the sector and how to start my work. Mukesh Mehta

Please let me know more about your company. I would be interested for the right opportunity. If interested... do revert. Kushal Parmar

e are an Indian company looking for trading opportunities between South Africa and India. Product line is not yet not decided, and we are currently conducting surveys. Interested parties may contact. Rana Jitendra Singh

ead a couple of articles on your website on the luxury goods segment. They were very insightful. Since I am a part of a startup, I was hoping to check with you if you could recommend any recruitment agencies that specialize in providing access to staff meant for luxury/ premium outlets. Looking forward to hear from you. Mohini Binepal

have been in touch with dare from the first edition onwards. I am very impressed with the response I get even today from DARE.I would like to start a food outlet in Bangalore. I have a masters in retail management from NIFT-Chennai and was always interested in food retail. I need some mentor or a person who is already in

ahul had an Internet-based startup and was looking for a sales advisor. Response Please provide more details on the requirement. We have over 16 years of IT sales experience majorly in the Internet, consulting and application arena. Vishal Sharma

ikram Singh has a business in the men’s garment section and is distributing franchises across India. He was interested in contacting franchisers as well as investors. Response Just saw your ad for franchise requirements. I am a budding entrepreneur looking for opportunity in franchise of men clothing for Delhi and Haryana. Please send me some details of the business model, investment required etc to take this forward. Ashish Mehta

also interested to start an NGO for Indians. Please help me. Sanjay Kumar

need angel funding for my already running matrimonial website. Parag

am working in Bangalore for the past three years, I am garnering all the information and working on my brainchild of setting up a bank, which is differnet from traditional banks in functions and availability and will definitely attract customers. Am looking for mentors who could guide me and assist me in how to go about this. Guruprasad S.P.

aravanan is running a BPO in the vertical of publishing and was looking for partners. Response Referring to the subject above, I am interested in the prospect of a partnership with Saravanan BPO at Coimbatore. S. Varadharajan

ilip Inuganti has been involved in developing and running several businesses and wanted to get in touch with small entrepreneurs willing to set up franchisee units in their areas. Enablers of youth employment, angel investors, and NGOs who think they can carry this project further should contact us. Response I am interested in knowing details of “Soyfit” project from Dilip Inuganti. Siddharth Limaye

am a resident of New Delhi since 1984. I am a physically challenged person interested to know how to start an NGO for physically challenged persons in India. Suggestions are welcome as I have a genuine problem and am

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Multilingual sales-force in Retail I’ve recently shifted from Mumbai to Mangalore, and one major difference I find is the behavior of the salespersons here (as compared to Mumbai). In Mumbai, the sales staff knows that they’re there to serve the customers; and there is so much competition there that they know if they don’t serve the customer properly, he/she will simply move on to the next shop. However, here in many shops, I find that the sales staff looses interest when they find the customer asking too many questions. Ask them to show you three or four items, and you start to notice a slight reluctance on their part (some of them even go to the extent of ignoring you!). Another thing I’ve noticed with sales staff here is that they are too slow. In the time that it takes a salesman to serve one customer here, a Mumbai salesman would have served at least three! I know life in the smaller cities is not as fast as in a metros like Mumbai, but yet there are times when the customer is in a hurry and it would be great if the salesmen would serve one faster. Sunil Suresh

magazine

Government Funding for Technology Startups The Indian government, via its various arms purportedly supports funding innovation and commercialization of technology. I agree with some of the reviews here—its peanuts. Apart from the starting disadvantage of very low funding assistance, the process itself is mired in bureaucracy and babudom. An analysis of how many applications have been received, processed and accepted will reveal the true and correct picture. Agencies like the Technology Development Board is the best place to really jumpstart innovation in India but alas, see the implementation of their own policies as an impediment to their calm and ineffective existence. Till the time the government can see its way to more transparency, more participation by private companies and NGOs for industry and interaction platform, these schemes will remain what they are today—peanuts for monkeys. Its easy to criticize without offering a solution—here are some simple possibilities that can possibly be implemented without too much effort or rancor: A clear policy, an example of previously funded projects and their track records published on the net, availability of members of the decision-making committee for one-on-one meetings/ video/internet conferences are some easy ways forward. The Indian entrepreneur has many things to contend with, many fires to fight and many hills to climb; it would help if the stepladders provided by the government were reliable, consistent and dependable. Vikram S Puri Government Funding for Technology Startups Thinking “Big” is a key step towards successful innovation. However, all those who are associated with innovation promotion programs in our country do not seem to have grown beyond petty thinking. Just look at the schemes that are being flaunted as major innovation promotion initiatives. magazine

magazine

blog

Ten sectors of the Indian economy that will be affected by the Dubai debt repayment crisis The media is downsizing the impact of the Dubai affair. Financial crunch has created a negative impact in the minds of the middle class and petty traders too. Hope things work out well in the near future. M V Naidu

blog

www.dare.co.in | email: dare@cybermedia.co.in | SMS ‘DARE <your msg>’ to 56677

feedback 12

How to Write a Good Request for Proposal (RFP) This is a welcome article on a dying competency. It is amazing to see many administrators spending millions on capital equipment and techno-commercial services without doing their managerial homework; taking providers or vendors for granted. In case of inputs required in a creative or NPD project, one needs to develop a brief. Udit Chaudhuri

JANUARY 2010 | FEEDBACK | DARE.CO.IN

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magazine

Prof. C.K. Prahalad A straight jacket set of views have been illustrated above by Dr Prahalad. He is a true visionary of all times. Strategy in organizations is a path beyond boundaries and is everlasting. Every individual global citizen must be given

blog

Post-sale support--is it important? Nice post. I couldn’t agree more around the importance of the postsales support. However, companies have been so much busy in their attempts to generate more sales, branding and marketing that in most cases the after sales support takes a beating. Selling a product is just one item in the value chain, but what binds the customer are the support (post sales, technical, etc.) channels that a company sets and more importantly how prompt and reactive it is. All said, in this competitive landscape, personally I think post-sales support is one very important factor to hold on to your customers Or else see your customers going to alternate options for sure. Everyone around is eager to grab your customer! Yogi

You are really doing great service to the prospective entrepreneurs and the society at large through DARE. I have the following comments/suggestions. •

There is a large population of unemployed who are also unemployable due to a combination of factors, like the differently challenged, the homemakers who can't move out, senior citizens, and those not having adequate formal education.

•

Many of them, if not most, are energetic, knowledgeable, and eager to have the opportunity to stand on their own with dignity rather than being dependent on others.

•

An unproductive population has a negative influence on the overall health and happiness of the society.

•

Please take the initiative to bring out the details of home-based business opportunities that these sections of people can take up, & and live with dignity. This will also be a great social service by discouraging people falling prey to money-spinning false advertisements offering home-based business. Krishna Rao

blog

The pain of scaling up As a small organization, I can appreciate the need and pain of scaling up. However, it takes a lot of efforts to divert vital focus and attention from immediate business needs to address such agendas. ERP implementation/ISO recognition, etc. are examples of pain points where consultants look for a lot of systematic information to be already available while that itself is needed in the first place. Looks to me that this itself is a business opportunity of sorts for entrepreneurs to enter into—an offering that hand holds a small organization to set it up for growth in terms of its policies and processes. Amit Raje

time absence of appropriate funds makes it much more difficult for innovators to take their ideas to market. A. S. Rao magazine

a chance to think big. One must dare to outburst his thoughts for the development of the global village. My namaskarams to Dr CK Prahalad and am eager to hear more such highlights. H. S. Sai

magazine

The Microentrepreneurship of a Roadside Tea Vendor Micro entrepreneurs are often ignored by the business magazine, congratulations for choosing to look at them. Anuradha Goyal

Government Funding for Technology Startups Great effort by Premnath and Vibhor to come out with this compilation. Funds do not create innovations; at the same magazine

Look at the funding limits. Rs75000 or even Rs10 or 15 lakh is peanuts if one pursues any big ticket innovation. What is clearly implied is that if you are an innovator, you must first think of an idea that can be commercialized within these funding limits. Are these people living in the real world? Do they know what it takes to develop, prototype, test and commercialize any innovative technology? No doubt, the schemes of the Department of Biotechnology seem more realistic. Does the country need innovative technologies only in the biotechnology sector? What about innovations in other sectors? Just because, we have already a few big companies operating in sectors like software, pharmaceuticals, etc. do we want to shut down innovations in these areas? Look at the innovation database of the National Innovation Foundation. It is plain pathetic. I do not think anyone who looks at the database would ever be enthused to take up the innovation challenge. As Ravi has pointed out, all our innovation initiatives are a crying shame. Let me give you my own example. I have been working on a software innovation in the area of database technology for many years and finally managed to commercialize it last year. It has cost me about Rs. 2.5 crore. I would spend about a crore more in the marketing exercise. Of course I believed in the power of my idea. So I put all my Rs 35 lakh of provident fund as the initial capital and then used commercial revenues earned from initial innovation to support follow-up innovation activities. I am not complaining. But the question the country must ask itself is: Should every innovator risk his life’s savings to make innovations work? M A J Jeyaseelan

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blogs/opinion

Inflation: The Enemy Within Are we learning from the mistakes we committed in the past? Not really. On the contrary, we seem to be repeating them. /Paranjoy Guha Thakurta

Ministers seem reticent to shed even crocodile tears for the poor these days. They may not publicly say so, but some of them probably think their honeymoon period with the voter is still on.

The author is an educator, an economic analyst and a journalist with over 30 years of experience in various media—print, radio, television, Internet and documentary cinema.

he single biggest failure of the second United Progressive Alliance government has been its failure to control food prices. India produces the world’s cheapest car, the Nano. It is also the country where certain categories of lentils or dal (tur, moong and arhar) cost no less than Rs 100 a kilogram. Sugar prices have trebled over the last 15 months, and are expected to rise further. Potato prices have doubled in a year. Butter could not be found in grocery shops in many localities of the National Capital Region in early November in anticipation of a price hike. Non-seasonal fruits and vegetables have become a luxury, not just for the aam admi in whose name the Congress-led coalition government won an electoral victory in April-May 2009, but even for the large sections of the country’s middle classes. Government spokespersons blame Indra Bhagwan, the god of rainfall, for the fall in the summer crop output—the production of kharif rice and wheat is down by around 10 percent. They seek to hold the state governments responsible for not ensuring that hoarders and speculators are taken to task. They claim intermediaries are skimming off profits from the time the food leaves the farm till the point it reaches your neighborhood retailer.

These explanations tell only one part of the story. The union government has to accept its share of responsibility. Calibrating exports and imports and coordinating the activities of at least three important ministries in the union government—agriculture, commerce and finance—is hardly simple in the best of times. The recent track record of the government in this regard has been pretty pathetic. A few examples would suffice. In late 2008 and early 2009, the government claimed that there was surplus sugar in the country and allowed exports of 4.8 million tons of the sweetener at Rs 12 a kg. The country will now be importing an estimated 7 million tons of sugar at a price that is more than double the price at which exports were made. Are we learning from the mistakes we committed in the past? Not really. On the contrary, we seem to be repeating them. Here’s an example. In the course of the year 2006, exports of onions surged by over 60 percent while retail prices in the domestic markets shot up by around 150 percent. What makes things worse is corruption. The outcome of an official investigation into the so-called rice export scam is still awaited. During 2008, a ban on the exports of non-basmati

JANUARY 2010 | COLUMN | DARE.CO.IN

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In late 2008 and early 2009, the government claimed that there was surplus sugar in the country and allowed exports of 4.8 million tons of the sweetener at Rs 12 a kg. We will now be importing an estimated 7 million tons of sugar at a price that is more than double that.

rice was cleverly circumvented and consignments of the cereal found their way out of India, ostensibly to a clutch of African nations—in the name of “humanitarian aid” —through a particular group of exporting firms that were specifically identified by representatives of the governments of these countries. No tenders were floated and what is especially questionable is that some of these consignments of rice were diverted through Geneva in Switzerland. No one has been punished thus far. Whether anyone will be or not, and when, is a matter of conjecture? A prominent weekly, Outlook, has claimed that the then Union Commerce Minister Kamal Nath knew of what had happened. Ministers seem reticent to shed even crocodile tears for the poor these days. They may not publicly say so, but some of them probably think their honeymoon period with the voter is still on. The next general elections are, after all, not scheduled before 2014. But the past has a strange way of catching up with the future. After the 19-month-long emergency, Indira Gandhi’s government was rejected by India’s voters in May 1977, but they voted her regime back to power in January 1980—the slogan that had a huge impact on the electorate at that time was related to the price of onions. Her son Rajiv Gandhi’s defeat in the polls in December 1989 took place after a sudden spurt in sugar prices. The person held responsible was the then Civil Supplies Minister Sukh Ram who was later indicted for corruption as telecom minister. The powers-that-be will be deluding themselves if they think they can ignore the impact of inflation on the ordinary homemaker who helplessly finds her real income shrinking by the month. Even none-too-accurate government statistics, namely, the official wholesale price index (WPI) point out that food prices have risen

by one-fifth over the past 12 months, while the prices of particular vegetables have shot up by huge proportions varying between 50 percent and 100 percent. A combination of two broad sets of factors—described by economists as ‘demand-pull’ and ‘cost-push’ factors—contribute to inflation. The drought, the rise in rural incomes on account of (among other things) the rise in minimum wages given under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and the higher minimum support prices for wheat and rice given to farmers, are among the reasons for the recent rise in food prices. At the time of writing in the third week of December, the food inflation rate was the highest in a decade. (In August 1991, three months after Manmohan Singh became Finance Minister, the WPI inflation rate had hit a high of around 17 percent.) The high inflation rate in 2008 was to a great extent driven by high energy prices as India imports three-quarters of the country’s total requirements of crude oil and petroleum products. Inflation is one economic phenomenon that everyone understands, for it pinches the pockets of virtually each and every individual. Economists differ on many issues, but all of them are unanimous that inflation is like a tax on the poor. Rising prices of essential commodities and articles of mass consumption reduce the real incomes of the underprivileged sections of society even as the incomes and profits of the rich could rise. When inflation is primarily a consequence of high food prices—as it is at present—it is akin to a double tax on the economically disadvantaged. This is simply because the poor spend a much larger proportion (often more than half ) of their earnings on food, unlike the affluent. And this is what makes inflation so socially disruptive and dangerous. DARE.CO.IN | COLUMN | JANUARY 2010 15

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Customer proďŹ ling and rating services Having burnt their fingers in the economic slowdown, credit and risk cover providers are now quite wary of borrowers. They are relying heavily on individual credit ratings before loosening their purse-strings. /Vimarsh Bajpai

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s the ripples of the global recession touched Indian shores last year, the banks and other lending institutions were among the first ones to partially close the credit window. They had reasons to do so, given that bad credit in the developed markets of the US and Europe was a big reason behind the fall of some of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s biggest financial institutions. With hardly any sector left untouched by the effects of the slowdown, it was mayhem in the job market as layoffs became the order of the day. Bank defaults rose to an all time high, leaving the banks skeptical about the re-payment potential of their customers. The credit cards segment was the worst hit where the default rate hit a high of 15percent in April this year, leading many banks to trim cash limits, and reduce credit exposure sharply. In some cases, the banks brought the cash limit on credit cards to zero. According to an estimate, the outstanding on credit cards stood at around Rs 25,000 crore in April this year, disbursed among 25 million credit card uses.

QUICK POINTS An individualâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s profiling and rating covers information about his/her identity, bank and credit accounts, balances, re-payment history, etc The profiling and rating is done by credit bureaus and a number of other companies Credit bureaus are a repository of individual credit data, and are shared among financial institutions such as banks, service providers such as telecom companies, and the likes Credit Information Bureau (India) Limited (CIBIL) is the oldest credit bureau in the country. The RBI has granted licenses to three more companies to operate. Although many other companies do individual profiling and ratings and share it with their customers One can avail his/her credit rating and can seek lower interest rates on loans if the rating is good Profiling services also include employee background checks. A number of companies are using this service to check the antecedents of their employees DARE.CO.IN | STRATEGY / CREDIT RATING | JANUARY 2010 17

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Many factors impact the riskiness of a borrower. Past behavior is an important indicator. For example late payments, defaults, too many lines of credit, all contribute to the riskiness of a borrower. — Siddharth Das Highmark Credit Information Services

Having burnt their fingers during the worst economic slowdown, the banks, mortgage firms, non-banking financial institutions, etc are now more cautious than ever in giving credit. To make their job a little easy, they are availing the benefits of individual credit reports while deciding on whether to disburse the loan at all to an individual or not. Not only this, a borrower with a bad credit history is likely to get a higher rate of interest than the one who has not defaulted on any of his loans in the past. They are digging out data of an individual’s financial profile from credit profiling and rating agencies such as the Credit Information Bureau (CIBIL); that as of now is the only operational credit information company. This credit data is being collected and shared as part of the provisions of the Credit

CREDIT INFORMATION COMPANIES (REGULATION) ACT, 2005(CICRA)

• This legislation came into force on June 23, 2005 • It is aimed at: Providing regulation of credit information companies facilitating efficient distribution of credit, having smooth management and conduct of credit information companies

Information Companies (Regulation) Act 2005 (CICRA).

Credit Information and Rating The credit information includes details such as the amount and nature of the loans taken by an individual, the outstanding amount on his credit cards, the nature of security on the loan granted, repayments made or defaults on loans. “Contributing institutions send information about identity, credit accounts, balances, and re-payment history for an account holder to bureaus. Bureaus aggregate information about an individual from different institutions to create one central record of a person’s entire credit history (again as per law),” says Siddharth Das of Highmark Credit Information Services. Highmark is among the three new companies to have got the RBI’s nod to start credit information companies. The others are global players: Experian Credit Information and Equifax Credit Information Services. The information is put together to sketch out an individual’s credit profile that reflects his credit worthiness as a borrower in the eyes of a credit institution. “They (the bureaus) may enrich such information from publicly available data,” says Das. This information helps lenders understand the riskiness of a borrower. “Past behavior is an important indicator. For example late payments, defaults, too many lines of credit, all contribute to the riskiness of a borrower,” he adds. Every parameter of the profile such as repayment, defaults, guarantees, etc has a score. Ratings or scores are based on underlying credit data, and are a summary indicator of risk. They are often used together with detailed reports for credit decisions,” says Das of Highmark. These are summed up using the rating model to arrive at a score. The credit history of an individual would come into existence only if he

JANUARY 2010 | STRATEGY / CREDIT RATING | DARE.CO.IN

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CREDIT BUREAUS CIBIL The Credit Information Bureau (India) Limited is the oldest in the country. It has a database of over 144 million accounts contributed by 114 members that include banks and non-banking financial institutions Experian Credit Information It is a global major in the credit information space with reportedly a database of 450 million people. Its Indian arm has been granted a provisional license to start operations High Mark Credit Information Services This Mumbai-based company is working on its pricing model before the launch of its services. It is a startup founded by Anil Pandya and Anuj Desai, and has been funded by investors such as Battery Ventures Equifax Credit Information Services A global player in this segment has got RBI’s nod to launch its services in India. Has tied up with CRISIL and Tata Capital

These ratings help the consumers too. A good rating can help get a lower rate of interest on loans and a lower premium on insurance. — S L Mirchandani, Promoter Onicra Credit Rating Agency

has taken a line of credit. “From that point onwards credit history goes on building with each credit transaction (including repayments). The longer the history, the more meaningful the information to conclude whether past behavior is a reliable measure of future risk,” he adds. “Preparing an individual profile takes 24 hours and the rating may take three to four days, says S L Mirchandani, Promoter, Onicra.

Using the Scores

The profiling services have helped us a lot. We avail of background checks on our employees to ascertain that the information that they have given to us are correct. — Sunit Chakravarty Manager – HR, Syscom

Taking the credit score into account, the lenders decide whether to sanction the loan or not or if they decide to give the loan, then at what interest rate. But this would be just one of the many factors that affect the bank’s decision on credit. These include collaterals, income, repayment capacity, etc. While the banks can individually access these ratings available with the credit bureau, an individual can get a rating for himself by paying a fee. If one has a good rating, one can then use it to seek a

loan at a lower interest rate. Another player in the individual profiling and rating sector is Onicra. It collects not the financial information alone but touches other areas as well, such as what car does an individual own, whether he has a fixed line phone or a mobile phone, etc. It then shares this information with its customers who are in the banking, insurance and telecommunication sector. “Now let’s say if the bank wants to know whether it should give a loan to an individual or not. So we provide our internal rating. Then it’s up to the bank to match it with their rating. They take our rating into consideration or not is up to them,” says Mirchandani. “When I rate the indiavidual, I have MoUs with banks where these ratings are accepted because I am empanelled by the Indian Banks Association. Let’s say a guy is getting an interest rate of ten percent; because I do a rating, he may be eligible for a nine percent interest rate,” says Mirchandani.

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blogs/opinion

An Entrepreneur’s New Year Resolutions

I /Anurag Batra

Do not let failures in the business pull you down. Learn from them, recover and aggressively pursue your goal like you started. Stay the course. However, do analyze why they happened so you do not repeat them.

Anurag Batra is real life, first-generation entrepreneur who is Much Below Average (MBA) from the prestigious Management Development Institute, MDI. When he is not busy writing such columns, he can be reached at anuragbatrayo@gmail.com. Anurag is the founder and editor-in-chief of exchange4media group which includes exchange4media.com.

t’s that time of the year when you, as a person, as a business enterprise, and as an entrepreneur, are making plans for the next year. You, as an entrepreneur, are introspecting, planning, ideating, strategizing and looking back to analyze for future implementation. The days of warmth make you think harder. You, as an entrepreneur, are looking at the last year and thinking of your hits and misses. What you did right and what you did wrong? What worked and what did not? What is the future direction you should take as an entrepreneur and as an individual? Entrepreneurs celebrate life and the spirit of enterprise, and before an entrepreneur can do that, he or she has to believe that he or she is maximizing his or her full potential. Here are my ten New Year resolutions—you may call them the Ten Commandments for an entrepreneur in 2010. Some of these are beliefs and ideas are universal and some are personal experiences, which lead you to the same eternal wisdom. 1. Stick to your knitting: Build on your core competence Let me give you an example from the industry I come from—the media Industry. Dr Prannoy Roy has divested NDTV Imagine (its GEC) and NDTV Lifestyle. Dr Roy is sticking to his strength of being the most credible and best in news. While I haven’t met Dr Roy recently and do not know his mind completely, my guess is that he believes it is time to consolidate, restructure and be a world-class news network rather trying to be a world-class TV company with non-news assets. This is my most important suggestion to an entrepreneur. Play a game that you are good at. 2. Drive your business: Be in it While it is great to recruit professional managers and experts in your business—after all, a smart entrepreneur

brings smarter people than himself on board—but at the end of the day the entrepreneurs should hands-on drive his or her business. An active interest from the entrepreneur does wonders for the business. 3. Listen to your gut feel You built the business as an entrepreneur. Great entrepreneurs recognize and implement good ideas from everyone, but they must ultimately go with their own gut feel. 4. Learn from your failures Do not let failures in the business pull you down. Learn from them, recover and aggressively pursue your goal like you started. Stay the course. However, do analyze why they happened so you do not repeat them. 5. Share your dream Share and articulate your vision often with your close team. It is important for your team to know they are on course. They need to be a part of the big picture. 6. Be the person and the entrepreneur you want to be Define your priorities, whether you are in it for money or passion. That determines how long you stay invested in the business. Be in the business for the right reasons and do the business in the right manner. 7. DREAM BIG Continue to grow the business even when times are tough. 8. Invest in people and create more entrepreneurs 9. Do not worry about results 10. Adapt as you go along I can go on, but really, these are simple gems that one needs to follow to be an entrepreneur and hit the jackpot. May you do in 2010! As someone wise decided in his New Year’s resolution: “To tolerate fools more gladly, provided this does not encourage them to take up more of my time.”

JANUARY 2010 | COLOMN | DARE.CO.IN

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photoblogsp A group of folk dancers awaits their turn at a cultural fest in New Delhi

ndian culture is one of the richest and most diverse in the world. Indiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s folk dances form the core of its cultural heritage, and are depicted in vibrant forms with songs, instruments, music, colorful dresses and bodily expressions. But unfortunately, many of our folk dancers spend their lives in oblivion, and find it difficult to make ends meet. Is there an opportunity in bringing them together at a platform, built on a sound business model that could improve the quality of their lives? Author: Vimarsh Bajpai

Being Multilingual

his picture does not show the person that I am actually talking about, but he was inside that thatched hut, catering to the needs of the customers who hail from different states of India and also from different countries. Obviously, the sales force of a retail outlet needs to be very active while dealing with the clients. Apart from being active and perhaps proactive, it also needs to be multilingual in case the customers from different areas are visiting. The person inside this thatched hut was a middleaged man who did not look very professional or formal from his dress but he was relaxed in dealing with foreign clients who had different English accents. Because this canteen was the only food outlet at this tourist place, the person had to be very effective in making it fast, which he actually did. So, does it help if the sales force of a retail outlet is multilingual? Of course it depends on the nature of the customers and areas where the outlets are located. But do retail outlets in metros or perhaps in bigger cities need to have multilingual sales force? (Photo taken at Hamayunâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Tomb, Delhi) Author: Vivek Kumar

JANUARY 2010 | PHOTO BLOGS | DARE.CO.IN

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sphotoblogs A window display at a shop in New Delhi

he store window makes the first impression on a customer, and if done beautifully, could increase footfalls and lead to higher sales. With the retail sector buzzing with competition, businesses are not shying away from spending that extra buck to get a terrific window display for their stores. Author: Vimarsh Bajpai

Lamps and Lights

f you happen to be in a hotel, a museum, or even a garden, you will notice the use of lamps and shades for various purposes. Some of them are purely for lighting purposes; some for decoration with different colors of light and its effects; and some like the ones in this picture-serving dual purpose of lighting and decoration. A simple look at this picture tells that the hanging circle awaits a vase. The combination of a lamp and a decorating piece makes it fit for gardens, outdoor parties, pathways of halls and grounds, and other similar purposes. On similar lines, does a lamp lights in your mind while thinking about a business idea in this segment? --It could be for hotels, marriage palaces, domestic use, etc. (Photo taken at Puttaparti, Andhra Pradesh) Author: Vivek Kumar

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Business of Medical Oxygen The ever-increasing demand of medical oxygen has opened doors for new players in this business. A number of allied businesses also thrive on the back of the fast growth in this segment. /Vivek Kumar OPPORTUNITY AREAS Manufacturing Distribution Refilling Maintenance Allied businesses such as masks and pipes

MANDATORY FOR OXYGEN CYLINDERS Standard color code as per BIS 5: 2004 Cylinders should be fitted with product-specific customized valves IP Tag with batch number, cylinder type, production date, production unit Valve guards Heat shrink seal Purging and testing 24

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s the healthcare sector remained recession-proof over the last year, it was not the hospitals alone that posted gains. A number of businesses that supply mission-critical products and services also thrived quite profitably. One such business is that of medical oxygen. This gas is used during surgery, intensive care treatment, inhalation therapy, etc. Apart from being used for treatment of hypoxia or hypoxemia, medical oxygen is used for asthma, bronchitis, pulmonary edema, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Oxygen is typically supplied to hospitals though bulk liquid deliveries and these hospitals employ distribution points and cylinder trolleys for portable use of medical oxygen.

Techniques to produce medical oxygen Medical oxygen can be produced in two forms. It is called GOX or GO when produced and delivered in gaseous form, and as LOX or LO when in its cryogenic liquid form. To produce oxygen in large quantities and at high purity as a gas or liquid, cryogenic distillation is adopted. For lower purity percentage of oxygen, adsorption technologies namely, Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA) or Vacuum-Pressure Swing Adsorption (VPSA, VSA) are employed. To produce medical oxygen, it is important that the oxygen gas is free of any hydrocarbons, water and impurities. Different technologies deliver different percentages of purity of oxygen. For medical use, 91-93 percent and 99.7 percent of purity is recommended. To achieve 91-93 percent purity of oxygen, Pressure Swing Absorption (PSA) type oxygen plants are used. In these plants, compressed air is passed over a special grade of sieve beds for the generation of oxygen. To achieve 99.7 percent purity of oxygen, bigger plants are used em-

ploying cryogenic distillation. A plant of capacity of 50 cubic m/hour would be ideal for filling around 200 cylinders of medical oxygen.

FEATURES OF A GOOD OXYGEN PLANT Quick start for fast cooling Simplicity of operation Easy availability of spare parts

The business

Low power consumption

The business of medical oxygen varies from the manufacturing of medical plants, production of medical oxygen, to distribution of gas cylinders. Other areas involve the manufacturing of medical gas cylinders, cylinder trolleys, regulators, pipes, and masks. Ing L&A Boschi (India) manufactures oxygen plants of various capacities to produce gaseous and liquid forms of oxygen. The company says that a plant of 50 cubic m/hour costs around Rs 40 lakh and a similar amount would be required for the cylinders. The cost of space, which would be around 300-400 sq. yard., would vary from place to place. Business for dealers would mean supplying the refilled cylinders on demand. Medical oxygen cylinders come in three different sizes: 5L, 10L and 47L. General refilling cost for these cylinders would vary: Rs 80 for 5L, Rs 100 for 10L and 160-180 for 47L. N Ravindran of RV Distributors in Chennai says he dispenses around 30,000 cubic m. of medical oxygen per month. Vijay Parikh of Al-Can Exports says his company produces cylinders after getting orders from oxygen producers. The standard color codes are then painted on the cylinder before it is delivered. The cost of cylinders depends on the size. On an average, a cylinder of 5L would cost around Rs 3,000, while a 10L cylinder would cost around Rs 3,000. A 47L cylinder would cost around Rs 6,000.

Low working pressure of oxygen gas plants

The market Hospitals, healthcare centers and nursing homes are the biggest buyers of medical oxygen. Some amount of the gas is sold to patients who are treated at home or those who need constant supply of oxygen because of medical reasons.

Low maintenance for producing oxygen gas High efficiency heat-exchanger to reduce operating cost. However, of late, some hospitals that have a continuous demand of medical oxygen and feel the pinch of transportation costs have started producing the gas on their own site.

Quality checks and standards The production of medical oxygen is done under rigorous quality checks. So, the material and equipment needed for production of medical oxygen have to be approved by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) and the grade of quality of medical oxygen should comply with Indian Pharmacopoeia 2007 (IP 2007). Cylinders to contain medical oxygen should be made from high strength aluminum alloy with standard finish and strictly inspected and tested at every stage of production as per BSEN -1975:2000 standards. The batches of cylinders need to be tested in an IP approved laboratory and certified by a competent person.

Challenges The business is good in big cities and there are not many difficulties in starting a business, says Ravindran. However, he says the quality standards and fair business practices are needed to ensure sustenance and growth of the business. Some challenges, like stricter testing policies, higher operating costs, and changes in medical gas standards pose some problems for production units.

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from the

All you want to know about Indian trains in just 7 web sites Posted by: Krishna Kumar in On the Website on Dec 14, 2009, Tagged in: Untagged

he Indian railways network has often been called the lifeline of the country. Running across the length and breadth of the country, it is one of the largest rail networks in the world and transports over 6 billion passengers and over 350 million tonnes of freight. Here are seven websites that cover (almost) the entire gamut of railway operations that you and me will ever get involved in. 1. erail.in Erail.in is the place for quickly looking up trains between stations and whether tickets are available for or around given dates. Erail has a no-frills interface and loads quickly. You can also get route maps, running status and PNR inquiries, but the quick train and seat availability lookup remains its USP. 2. Indiarailinfo.com Indirailinfo gives you all that Erail gives and then some more. It has a record of delays in start and arrival, links up questions and comments to the train being looked at, has news, distance travelled, speed and even lets you correct information like platform numbers. And you can further filter your search for trains by departure or arrival days and times and classes. It also links to videos of trains! The pages are heavy and need some bandwidth. The design could be better, but this is the most comprehensive site yet on Indian Railways and offers everything about passenger trains other than booking. Not recommended for mobile or datacard use. 3. Trainenquiry.com Trainenquiry gives you current running status of a selected train. (The site has a number of other useful links, but this is the key USP.) You have to go through four sequential steps of identifying a group of trains, selecting the exact train, selecting the station and finally selecting the day of journey before you can get to the information you want. Laborious process, but it works and it works from your cellphone also. One problem with this site is that you cannot do repeated queries on the site because of caching issues. You need to reload/redo every search from start 4. irctc.co.in You can book and cancel your railway tickets here, after registering yourself. This has grown to become what is probably the largest ecommerce site in India. The site itself is simple and easy to use, but what sets it apart is the quality of customer service. They are really good and understand what customer service is all about. Period. 5. fois.indianrail.gov.in If your business with the railways is about freight services, then this is the website to go to. You can track your parcel at this site. Regular customers have their own login to manage their freight. 6. Railway tenders If you do business with the railways, chances are high that you need to track their tenders. If your want to track the tenders put out by the Indian railways, you can do that from any number of tender sites. I have linked to one of them above. Different railway units have their own tendering systems and need to be tracked separately. For example, the tenders put out by IRCTC can be found athttp://www.irctc.com/displayServlet?displayActionFlag=Tenders_Calendar and Delhi Metroâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s tenders can be found at http://www.delhimetrorail.com/corporates/latest_tenders.html. 7. IRFCA IRFCA stands for the Indian Railways Fan Club. The site runs a mailing list as well as has extensive documentation on all things Indian Railways, including engines (locomotives for the uninitiated) crew scheduling, and a massive database of engines.. ooops locomotives - 10691 of them when I last checked. It also has a gallery of pictures of everything Indian Railway.

JANUARY 2010 | FROM THE BLOGS | DARE.CO.IN

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Air Travel: Online Activities Take the Cake Posted by: Vimarsh Bajpai in in the news on Dec 11, 2009, Tagged in: United Airways, SITA, online booking, Mumbai International Airport, Delta, American Airlines, Air travel

ith the US on its way out of recession, there are some indications that the airline industry could be bouncing back too. The good news has come from three largest airlines in the US—Delta, United Airways and American Airlines. Delta’s top finance official has been quoted as saying that his company sold more corporate tickets last month that it did in the corresponding month of last year. But it came at a cost. The airline had to reduce the price of its corporate and premium tickets to notch those impressive sales in the high-end bracket. The other two airlines have echoed similar rise in business class travel, particularly on international routes. But the big winner in all this has been the online activity related to air bookings, check-ins, etc. According to the SITA Air Transport World Travel Self Service Survey, passengers’ adoption of online booking options continues to grow, and this is because of the convenience in booking online. The survey is the outcome of interviews done with 2,193 passengers of over 80 different nationalities flying on more than 100 different airlines. The passengers were interviewed at different airports across the world including Mumbai International Airport. Around 64% of the respondents booked tickets online in 2009, compared to 58% last year. Airlines’ websites are now gaining popularity with regards to hotel bookings, tours, etc, as the study says that the number of passengers buying such ancillary services is likely to double in the coming years. The survey also found that most passengers would like to change security screening, dwell time at the airport, in-flight experience and waiting to collect check-in baggage. The survey also states that 90% of the passengers expressed a positive attitude towards buying tickets online and almost everyone would want to use the convenience of the web.

Labour reforms: The Need of the Hour Posted by: Vimarsh Bajpai in in the news on Dec 11, 2009, Tagged in: World Bank, SME, small and medium enterprises, micro, manufacturing sector, labour reforms

he manufacturing sector, particularly the micro, small and medium enterprises, are grappling with a host of problems that result in many of the units either getting closed, relocated or simply stagnant. These problems range from the inability to raise growth capital, failure to use technology as an enabler, difficulty in optimizing time to market, and those relating to hiring, retaining and training their labour force. During an SME Event, organized by DARE last month, it came as a bit of a surprise when a promoter of a small manufacturing unit shared his apprehension about training its labour force from time to time, fearing that once they acquire certain skills, they would migrate to another company, leaving them with no returns on training expenses. Fearing losing his employees to competition, he was unwilling to train them in newer skills. Migration of workforce is a reality that no company today, no matter how big or small, can ignore. Just like an entrepreneur of a small enterprise wants to make its company big one day, similarly the employees also have the desire to earn more, learn newer skills, and improve the quality of their lives. According to World Bank estimates, around 80 million new people will enter India’s workforce over the next decade. It is a boon and a bane at the same time. With millions of young hands to work, India is uniquely positioned as the powerhouse of labour in the community of nations, given that many countries in the developed world are grappling with ageing population. At the same time, low productivity and wages in the manufacturing sector and archival labour laws will wreck havoc when millions of new entrants in the country go around looking for jobs. While the manufacturing sector is believed to be a large employer but it is the unorganized units that contribute the lion’s share of jobs, compared to the organized units. Those working in the unorganized sector are out of the purview of labour reforms and thus deprived on several benefits such as the provident fund, medical and life insurance etc. At a recent event, the Minister of State for Labour and Employment, Harish Rawat stressed the need for a social security cover to increase competitiveness. But no cover would be complete without bringing the millions in the unorganized sector in the umbrella of labour reforms.

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Is the stage set for a bad deal at Copenhagen? Posted by: Binesh Kutty in in the news on Dec 05, 2009, Tagged in: united nations framework convention on climate cha, kyoto protocol, emissions, developing nations, danish proposal, copenhagen, climate change, center for science and environment

es, if one were to believe CSE (Center for Science and Environment). CSE fears the realization of the worst case scenario at Copenhagen. Some indicators specified are as follows:

•

The US White House issues statement, just after the Indian environment minister’s statement in Parliament. Declares that there is now an emerging consensus on a global deal in Copenhagen based on the ‘Danish Proposal’.

•

The White House has lauded India’s and China’s new emissions intensity targets, but has only pledged to cut US emissions to just 3 percent below 1990 levels, even though, to meet the 2 degree centigrade target, the US must cut down its emissions by 40 percent.

•

The White House makes it clear that India issued targets for carbon intensity because of bilateral meetings with the US president and months of diplomatic activity.

•

The problem: the Danish Proposal would do away with the distinction between developed and developing nations. Also, it negates the concept of historical responsibility and would eliminate internationally binding targets. Instead, every nation would ‘pledge’ voluntary action based on domestic legislation.

•

This will be an end to the Kyoto Protocol (2) and the principles enshrined in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

How it actually plays out is something we will know in roughly two days from now. I hope that the draft is not finalized if it is as bad as Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh has mentioned it to be.

Paranormal activity or viral marketing? Posted by: Vimarsh Bajpai in in the news on Dec 02, 2009, Tagged in: viral marketing, Tweetyourscream, The Blair Witch Project, social networking, paranormal activity

fter a young American couple moves into a new house, they are distracted by the presence of what seems like a demonic activity. The wife is convinced of the presence of some ghostly characters inside the house. Then follows the drama, comprising of doors slamming and creepy shadows moving around. This is the storyline of the latest flick rocking the theaters across America. Paranormal Activity has been shot using a handycam with producers spending only $15,000. The movie’s page on Twitter, dubbed as Tweet Your Scream has been witnessing posts like “I have seen the movie 11 times” or “It’s been 4 weeks now since I have seen Paranormal Activity & I am still not sleeping right...something’s wrong” or “Just watched Paranormal Activity, fingers r still shaking as i type this message!!!” The movie’s presence on other social networks has added extensively to its popularity. The movie seems to have taken a leaf out of the success of an earlier Hollywood flick, The Blair Witch Project that released in 1999. The movie set a rage on the back of the viral prowess of the Internet. Viral marketing techniques in recent years have gained traction, and are being widely used by startups and established players. For startups, it is a cheap and quick way to reach out to potential customers. The idea is to create a buzz around your products or services, to let the world know that you are there. And the best thing is that it is much cheaper when compared to a full-page advertisement in publications or 10-second slots on TV and radio. Find out if you can rope in some brand evangelists to help you out on this. It could be some of your satisfied or loyal customers who might be willing to spread the word. They would write about your products and services on forums and social networking platforms. Just like fans of a football team who color the walls with supportive messages, the brand evangelists set the Web on fire to tell the world that you have arrived. Sending mailers online is a good technique. You can get a student with a knack for creativity to help you design a good mailer, and make it a weekly affair. Anything sent daily could turn-off the receiver. Make sure that the messages are forceful and to the point. Viral marketing is not just about blowing your own trumpet. It involves patient to-and-fro communication with your customers, some of whom could be critical of your offers. This too would be helpful in giving a sense of where you could be going wrong. So, instead of being a controller be an enabler.

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entrepreneur of the month

He formed TEAM almost two decades back and has since grown the company to 300 Crore revenues with over a thousand employees, supporting more than 600 customers across the country and outside.

Ranjan Chopra Team Computers

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Setting goals and simply expecting things to happen is not the right approach. We need to inspect all the time. Trust but verify.

an we begin with the days before Team Computers? At IIT Kanpur, I was disillusioned by the system. We used to sit together and eat together, but when it came to helping each other, it was an absolute no-no. By the time I hit third year, I had mentally dropped out. Post IIT, I got the opportunity to work with Philips, which proved to be a good learning ground with its techno-commercial background. Two years of training people how to service equipment and I realized that it was not challenging enough. It is then that I joined Raba Contel, an Apple distributor, as service manager. The issue was that they did not trust people enough. The system was not oriented towards helping customers and became too bureaucratic; I quit. I then went to Europe on a hitchhiking trip and spent a few months soul searching – driving trucks, picking oranges in Greece, etc. When I came back, I met a few old customers who starting enquiring about why I stopped fixing their Mac, Laser Printer, etc. It stuck me that there was a need of Infra support and I saw this as an opportunity. That was the beginning of Team.

Where does Team stand today? This year has seen a slowdown; we have come down from an 1400 to about 1100 employees. We were at the 300 Cr. run rate, and despite the slowdown will do 200 Cr. plus. We operate pan-India and even remote areas in North-East like Assam, Manipur, Mizoram, etc. The only place we have not covered is Srinagar because we feel that the safety of our team members is very important. As for product lines, we have pretty much all end-to-end solutions. Our centre of the universe is the IT people – the CIOs and the CTOs. A customer wants a good, stable IT infrastructure and a layer of applications on top of that capturing information and yet another layer on top of that which allows them to make sense of the information. Done well, IT helps improve business performance. For a CEO it should help in increasing sales, cut costs, improve profits and so on. For a CFO it should enable compliance etc. and for a marketing head it should facilitate increasing market share and more. No matter what the KPI, we are able to cover all the needs of an organization.

What was your objective when setting up the company? Philips was a large company where one gets lost. On the other hand, in the small company the work was challenging but was too bureaucratic. I believed that I could set up a platform where people can express themselves and do meaningful work. It should be like a musician playing – it should be in the flow. I thought that it was possible to work like that.

What are the personal milestones you have had in business? The big change has been whenever we have transited from one state to another. We started off as a break-fix infra-support player and then we moved to a full-fledged hardware/ network integrator. The big shift was when we took on software, because only a few have managed to successfully move from hardware into software. Finally, being able to help

customers use information i.e. building dashboards, analytics, reporting systems, etc has been a big transition. The other big milestone was setting up of business in the United States. It was pretty late in the day for us because the big names in the game had all set up much earlier. However, there were and there are niches available. How do you plan and execute a successful business transition? First, it is important to get the achievable goals right. Once that is done, the second step is to create the structure to support the goals. Then comes the processes that support the structure. Finally, it is crucial to have the right people to operate the processes and structure. One thing I learnt from Lou Gerstner is that setting goals and simply expecting things to happen is not the right approach. We need to inspect all the time. Trust but verify. With all the competition around, how do you retain your people? It is true that people come and go, immediately at times. In order to retain good people, we need to invest a lot in terms of making work meaningful. We run training programs almost 300 days in a year. Employees respect that and when they see that we are investing in them, a bond is created. Treating people right is very important. The two key values that we have been able to uphold in our work environment is love and respect. Also, it is important to provide opportunities to employees to grow and take up larger responsibilities DARE.CO.IN | BIO | JANUARY 2010 31

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My job as the leader is to ensure that I am able to support the people who report to me. This boils down to listening to the needs of my people, checking on goals being met, identifying structure changes if needed, etc

within the organization. Sometimes they fail, and the organizations tolerance for failure has to be fairly high. How do you keep on top of things? I use an information cockpit in my office. This is what we do for our customers, right? The dashboard tells me what are the red, orange, and green areas in the business in real-time. It is basically data converted to information converted to intelligence converted to insights. It helps the entire organization to stay on top of things. My job as the leader is to ensure that I am able to support the people who report to me. Basically this boils down to listening to the needs of my people, checking on goals being met, processes being followed, identifying structure changes if needed, etc. A large part of my focus is on ensuring that our systems are up-to-date and are supporting people in doing their jobs. What are the key things you monitor on your dashboard? The finance dashboard is something I check on regularly. Every CEO needs to have a pulse on cash flow. We have our business intelligence systems publishing our daily score cards which is sent to a number of people. For instance, our quarterly sales targets which gets divided into monthly targets,and weekly targets. When people come to work every morning, they know exactly what they are starting off with. What are the things you did to manage the slowdown? We took a lot of fat out of the system. In any system, the fat lies in processes. We innovated processes to reduce 32

time taken. Next was productivity. We went deep into every role, every function and look at performance. We also cut down on indirect costs. One thing we did not do was cut salaries of the employees. We stopped increments for a while though. The only two salaries cut in Team was mine by 50% and our CFOs, who was kind enough to himself take a cut of 15%. We did not want to send a wrong message of pessimism. Your original aim of creating a platform where people are happy to work; where do you stand now? One thing I feel satisfied about is the fact that we have people who have been working here since the beginning; many who have been here for 15 years or 10 years plus with the company. Also recently, I found my wife telling me that she met a group of people in Team who were extremely happy working here. Long story short, there is never an end to achieving perfection and excellence but yes, we have moved forward in the direction of my original idea. Failures that you learnt from? We missed out on the opportunity of software export. In the early 90s, I remember going around in the US market trying to get programming work from Silicon Graphics. We also set up a subsidiary in Australia trying to market educational software. I gave up on that in two years, which I now know was too soon. The other failure has been that I have let my heart rule over my head. If someone is not performing; it is probably a wrong person (not a bad person) on the bus. I should have

helped the person get off quickly. Taking too much time in deciding had caused a lot of problems. Also, we should have been ten times our size. We should have leveraged the equity and debt markets better. When we started out we were very aggressive, however we have been a little too conservative in the last ten years. Your next big challenge? I am very excited by what Tata has done with the Nano; which goes customer wallet backwards. I want to create high-quality low-cost solutions for the large market that is India. Also, we have the potential of creating many more entrepreneurs. We have done that to a limited extent.We could definitely help set up more such companies. Also, I look forward to Team Computers becoming more active in corporate social responsibilities. How is the balance between work and personal life working out? It would be untrue to say that I am doing justice to my family. But I am improving. Besides family, I have a passion for playing music. I play the saxophone. I would like to attend music school and play with Jazz musicians. Your advice to aspiring entrepreneurs on the one thing to avoid? Avoid the short-cuts and instead take the long road. It is important to focus on the value system, the structure, the processes, and the people. The first team which you build is very important â&#x20AC;&#x201C; so select people with the utmost care. R

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must-have elements for your business website /Vivek Kumar

here is no denial of the fact that today every business needs to have a website. We are not talking e-commerce or online businesses here. It is highly recommended that even a business which is primarily not online-based has at least a minimalistic web presence. The purpose of this is to facilitate customers, partners, clients, etc to get relevant information about your business with ease. However, the challenge is to get this whole deal right. One usually ends up asking friends, colleagues, and acquaintances to recommend a good website developer to do this job for you. You will almost inevitably be offered packages such as, 5 page HTML website, fancy Flash based website, and so on. This article is a primer covering a list of elements which are ‘absolutely must haves’ for any business website. So, when you finalize on the website developer, ensure that he incorporates all these.

Relevant Domain Name It only makes sense to have a domain name that matches with the name of your company. However, it is inevitable that if the name happens to be generic, you might not get a .COM domain. It is recommended that you try some minor variations 34

with the name. For instance, if companyname.com is unavailable, try companynameindia.com or companynameltd.com and so on. Better still, check for availability in .IN, .CO. IN, .ORG, .ORG.IN, .NET, and .BIZ. Once you have decided the domain name, get it registered for five years or ten years or more. Besides getting a discount for longer registrations, this will eliminate the possibility of missing out on renewing year after year. Also ensure that the email address you specify for domain name related notifications is the one that you regularly check.

Reliable Webhosting Company If domain name is the name of your online shop, webhosting is the space required to setup the shop. For this, we recommend that you choose plans from a reliable webhosting company. Some of the most popular ones are Go Daddy, CPanel, Dream Host, Blue Host, Rediff Business Solutions, Yahoo Hosting etc. Some of them have ‘unlimited packages’ that come at affordable prices. Ask around for references as there are many operators of questionable service levels and integrity.

etc is an absolute no-no on your business card as well as your business website. Now that you have a domain, you should set up professional email addresses. Examples: kumar@companyname.com, sales@ companyname.in, etc.

Content Management System It is very important that your website lets you easily add, modify, or delete content. You should not be dependent on the website developer for minor changes in content or updating of the website. The solution to this is going for a content management system (CMS). There is plenty of CMS to choose from or you can sign up with services like WordPress. You can get your developer to install and customize them for you. Some of the popular CMS are Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla, PHPWebSite, etc. The objective of getting a CMS is to have an administration panel (back-end) that lets you easily control content on the website (front-end). The backend allows you to add articles, news, blogs, company details, promotional activities, etc.

Frequent Content Updates Professional Email IDs Email address from a free email provider like Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail,

Content is the most important element of a website and nothing tops updated content. It shows that the

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website is alive; not just to the visitors, but to the search engines too. These updates can be in the form of news, blogs, press releases, offers, etc. Also, when we say that the website should be frequently updated, it includes getting rid of expired offers and promotions, changing content in the company information page, and so on. No one appreciates visiting a website that was last updated months or years back. Things change in business, and these changes should be reflected in your website. And remember, we went for a content management system so that we can update the website frequently and easily!

Social Media Integration It is a social media crazy world out there. Almost everyone out there is a member of at least one of the most popular social/business networking websites, be it Facebook, Orkut, Twitter, or LinkedIn. It only makes sense that you have a mechanism in place on your website so that a visitor can broadcast information from your website to his or her friends and followers. Besides social networking, there are social bookmarking websites such as Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, etc which can help in promoting information from your website to the cyber world. Integrate social media onto the website. Especially, in those areas of the website which are most frequently updated e.g. blogs, news, press releases, photo galleries, etc.

Newsletters

Newsletters that are typically sent out to subscribers contain news, updates, promotions, etc. This is yet another element to propagate content to subscribers. By having a newsletter subscription mechanism in place, a visitor who is interested in getting updates from your company can enlist himself in the mailing list.

The purpose of having a contact form on the website is to have an easy and quick way for any visitor to get in touch with you. The benefit of having a form instead of just providing an email address is manifold. For one, the form can let you segregate messages by the nature of the contact. For instance, you could have General Feedback, Customer Care, Product Enquiry, Distributorship Related, and so on. You can get these queries sent to the relevant department or personnel in the company. It is also important that the contact form captures all necessary details such as the contact person name, contact number, email address, postal address, etc. It is highly recommended that any contact made through this form sends out an automated-response to the person contacting you. This message acknowledges that their message is received and will be looked into by relevant people. Needless to say, you should get relevant people to respond to the contact person.

Sitemap A sitemap is a must-have for two reasons. One, the visitor can see the sitemap which displays a hierarchical view of the websites structure, and figure out exactly where to find the page he is looking for. The second reason is that a sitemap is crucial in making your website easily searchable and indexable by the search engines. There are lots of free XML sitemap generators out there that you can use. Once you have created a sitemap, it is very important that you submit it to all the popular search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. Major search engines require you to authenticate your site by creating an account with them and putting up a code fragment that they provide at your site. Till that is done, most of them will show your pages in search results. You need to also regularly maintain one or more (more as your site gets bigger or more complex) site maps that they download (at their own frequencies) to update their index pool.

About us Syndication This is to enable visitors to pull content from your website to a program they prefer â&#x20AC;&#x201C; without visiting your website. These feeds will be read through RSS Readers, or email clients. You should ask your web developer to integrate RSS or Atom syndication on your website.

It is very important to have an About us section where information about company, its business, key people, and promoters is provided. This helps in increasing the credibility of the business. It is also healthy to have some pictures of the companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s physical offices and also of the key people.

Locations This page should have postal address of your company, and any branches that the company has. This brings a lot of credibility to the website, as to being a website of a genuine business. Along with the address, it is desirable to put up phone numbers, fax numbers, and a directions map. You can use Google Maps for directions or simply provide a drawing that serves as a map. Besides this, you should also specify where the website visitor can go to buy your product or avail services. This means listing down as many retail, wholesale, distributor outlets as possible.

Clients, Partners, and Affiliates With billions of websites out there in same or similar business as yours, it is important to showcase who are DARE.CO.IN | STRATEGY | JANUARY 2010 35

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the clients, partners, and affiliates that you have for your business.

Testimonials and Reviews While providing a list of clients, partners, and affiliates bring in credibility of the business to an extent, posting testimonials and reviews of customers, clients, partners, and affiliates ensures that credibility is complete.

You can also get co-founders and other senior and responsible team membersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; blog on the website. The blogs let you connect you with the visitor in an informal but direct manner. If someone comments on a blog entry, respond to it. Keep things lively out there. The fact is many search engines these days love picking up content from blogs and throw them up front when someone does a search.

Latest Promotions and Offers This should come upfront when a visitor comes into your website. Typically this should be a visual element â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a picture, animated image, or a flash video. This element shows that you are interested in keeping the world informed about the latest promotions and offers available by your company. case someone is interested.

Graphics and Photo Gallery While the Internet has always given a lot of importance to text, graphics and pictures have their own appeal and importance. Having a dedicated photo gallery makes your website look interesting and informational. A photo gallery showcasing your products, services or demos of your products would add to the informational appeal of your website. You can integrate galleries from photo hosting websites such as Flickr, Picasa web, etc.

Latest News and Blogs Remember we spoke about updating content to keep the website alive? This is where most of the updating can happen. You should have a news section, which should provide all the latest activities of your business. You can take this up a notch and provide news of the industry you are in too. As far as blogging goes, you know it is the buzzword these days. Can you, as the promoter of the business, blog about what is happening in the business and in your life? 36

tion for smaller business. Alternative payment mechanism like Paypal is not really popular in India.

Security One element that many forget to demand is optimal security for their website. It is important that you get the web developer to get the website audited for security loop holes and patch any loop holes found.

Alerts & Notifications Press Releases and Media Coverage For every major activity or major update in the business, you should get press releases made and put these up on the website. This allows people from the media to be abreast of your business and use it in articles they write. Needless to mention, publicity helps. Facilitate it. For any media coverage that you or your company gets, it is desirable to put it up online under a media coverage section. You should request the journalist for PDFs of the articles published and the URLs of the articles, if it is available online.

Downloads This is the section where a visitor should be provided with takeaways. You could provide download of whitepapers, case studies, manuals, guides, how-tos, and other such literature related to your products and services. You could also design some wallpapers with your business name or logo or product photos which the visitor can download and set on his desktop.

Secure Payment Gateway If you intend to sell products and services online, you need to have a secure payment gateway. You can tie-up with a bank to integrate a payment gateway on your website. However, the problem is the banks demand a hefty deposit or a large enough transaction commitment that straight away rules out the op-

If your business website goes down even for a minute, you should know about it. Server monitoring services do exactly this at specified intervals from locations across the world. You can receive alerts in the form of SMS, email and other mechanisms when a problem arises. For instance, Pingdom.com offers a number of reports including uptime and response time along with monitoring. You can be alerted, both, when a service comes down and when it comes back up.

Analytics It is highly recommended to have an application collect analytics of your website. Google Analytics is easy to set up and you can be up and active in minutes literally. The service gives you an overview of the visitors to your site and you can drill down to get more details, including where the visitors came from, what led them there and so on. It also gives you a map with drill down, which shows you where your visitors are coming from. Extreme Tracking, Mint, HitBox are some examples of paid analytics.

Regular Backups Last but not the least, it is important to have regular back-up of your website. This ensures that if there is a crash of the server or some other problem , you have your data and files saved and you can restore your website quickly. R

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TiE Entrepreneurial ENTERPRISING INDIA - CHANGING

GURUKUL SESSION DAY 1

Opening Keynote Panel, Enterprising India—Changing the Nation, Leading the World, Ratan Tata, Shekhar Gupta and N.R. Narayana Murthy.

Jerry Rao (Value Budget Housing) on ‘Founder’s Team: Challenges & Responses’ 38

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Summit 2009 (Mumbai) GURUKUL SESSION DAY 2

THE NATION. LEADING THE WORLD

Nishith Desai (Nishith Desai Associates)

Harsh Mariwala (Marico) on ‘Building Organizational Culture & Relevance’

K.V. Kamath (ICICI Bank) on ‘Transformation’

Kishore Biyani (Future Group) on Fear of Failure

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GURUKUL SESSION DAY 3

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Chanda Kochar (ICICI Bank) on ‘Building and rebuilding businesses’

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Status of

Print Media in Digital Times Thanks to technology, the global media landscape, like everything else, is forever evolving. In a digitized world, should you even be looking at launching a print publication? If you think you should, what are the most essential questions that you should answer before you fulfill your dream of launching one? /Aman Malik

f thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s one thing that has truly revolutionized the world in the last five hundred years, it is the printed word. Printing technology simply made it easy for the world to share knowledge and further the cause of human civilization. And overtime, journalism, a new form of â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;literature in a hurryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, developed into

a profession, piggy banking on this invention. Then, sometime towards the end of the nineteenth century radio burst on the scenes, and it looked like news in print would soon be history, but contrary to all expectations and predictions, the print news media thrived. A few decades later television

arrived and similar nay, even more dire predictions about the imminent demise of the print media were made; but it marched on. In the last decade, with the Internet becoming ubiquitous all over the developed world and across swathes of the developing world, the demise of the printed word stares us in the face,

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or so say the naysayers. Countering them are the spirited bunch of optimists who argue that the medium will survive this onslaught as well, and both sides have very convincing figures to boot. Now, since statistics are the last refuge of the devil, this piece will shy away from quoting too many figures to support either argument. Yet, what cannot and should not be discounted is the fact that across the developed West, the print media – newspapers and magazines -- are in a steady decline, and the economic recession has only added to their bag of woes. One major reason for this decline is the ever-changing tastes and reading habits of the people in the developed world. With the Internet pervading almost all aspects of their daily existences, and their lives becoming ever more stressed, they are reading less and increasingly consuming their news in ways other than from their morning paper or the weekly magazine. Moreover, with the recession, the advertising revenues have plummeted as a result of which their print runs have taken a sizable hit; forcing many newspapers to downsize and lay people off. The latest figures of the Publisher Information Bureau of the United Stares indicate that till September 2009, magazines in the United States have seen a whopping 27 percent drop in the number of advertisement pages translating into a 20 percent drop in revenue. In Canada as well, the number of advertising pages dropped 21 percent, signaling the same trend. Moreover, news resources such as The Huffington Post (http://www. huffingtonpost.com/) are using innovative models such as getting together loosely knit teams of a few hundred unpaid bloggers across the United States and few in other countries to write. In fact, The Huffington Post has a unique business model in which half the content is dished out gratis by their team of blogger

reporters, in real time, whereas the remainder is aggregated from news resources across the world. And the site reportedly made upwards of US$ 3 million in revenues last year. Why do people write for free for The Huffington Post? Well, if your piece is published, you’re read by millions of people online. To put it simply, it has become ‘prestigious’ to write for it now (Barack Obama wrote for them before the US went to vote last November), and that is the value proposition the site offers to each of its contributors. And in a little over three years since Ariana Huffington launched this venture, it has become the most visited blog on the Internet! The fundamental point here is that in the developed world, there has, in the last few years, come about a tectonic shift in the way people consume news. No longer is the traditional media the sole provider of up-to-date information. Professionally managed blogs and aggregators that offer relevant video and audio inputs (live or recorded) on the same platform, are filling in an important void, and fast. And the traditional news media is fast having to play catch-up with most news media websites offering full content with relevant audio-visual inputs and user-generated content. Several blog publications in the US are now also available on e-book readers like the Kindle, which are the new ‘in thing’ when it comes to content delivery mechanisms. Recently five big magazine publishers in the US — Condé Nast, Meredith Corp., News Corp., Time Inc. and Hearst Corp — teamed up together to form a ‘digital storehouse’ so as to provide digital content to consumers across media like phones, e-book readers, laptops, etc.

The scene in India: should you be starting a new print publication? In India, however, the story is quite different. The print media in English, Hindi and the regional languages is

not just managing to sustain, but it is actually thriving. To be sure, during the height of the economic recession there were a few scares when advertising revenue had suddenly dried up and the cost of newsprint had shot up, and many a publications did tweak their revenue model or reduce their print runs in a bid to survive. Yet, as compared to the mainstream English media in the United States or the United Kingdom, the English print media in India has weathered the storm rather deftly (of course, an indirect government bailout in terms of full page advertisements just before the recently concluded general elections was more than just helpful, but that is another story). One major reason why print readership in India has not been impacted is the low penetration of the Internet in the country. And this is visible more so in the case of the Hindi and the vernacular press, whose core readership hardly seems to access news from online sources. Besides, online news resources specific to India are more or less mere ‘extensions’ of their print editions with hardly any exclusive content available online. Moreover, no news resource in India has managed to generate a workable business model that can sustain its online venture on a standalone basis. Yet, with the impending advent of 3G telephony within the next few months and with streaming content on the phone (over time at extremely low tariffs) set to become a reality, one can speculate and for a good reason that irrespective of the language, Indians would take to the digital medium as their preferred mode of news consumption and that the print media will face its biggest challenge (since the advent of 24-hour news channels) in the next three to five years. Whether the print media will stand up to such a challenge is anybody’s guess. What cannot be discounted however is that anyone hoping to start DARE.CO.IN | STRATEGY | JANUARY 2010 41

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a print venture will have to take the ever-changing technology and its impact into account. Before starting a publication in any market, there are a few pertinent questions that need to be asked and answered: 1. Is there a need-gap that such a publication would seek to fulfill? Often, publications are launched without any apparent need for them. The market is flush with funds and businesses with money to deploy and jump onto the bandwagon hoping to grab a share of the pie. They do so often with very little understanding of the market or what the consumer desires. Such infirmities are sought to be glossed over with glitzy advertising campaigns and seemingly irresistible promotional offers. The biggest casualty is content, and more often than not, shoddy, misdirected and mistimed content sinks the publication. A new publication would most likely succeed if it can offer niche content. This is because chances are that the market is already saturated with good and mediocre generic and even some specialist publications and you can survive only if your publication can wade through the noise. 2. If there is a need-gap, can such a need-gap be bridged only by launching a print publication, or are their alternatives in the electronic or online space that can do the job better? If you figure that you should rather be serving your customers by launching an online news resource, you would save yourself the hassle of setting up printing and distribution networks. Even if you think you must serve news in black ink on a paper, you would do well if you plan an integrated online presence with the flagship offline venture, while you are still at the drawing board so that you can figure out how much of your online content has to be subscription-based and how much is free. 42

3. Are there any existing publications that can tweak their content or delivery mechanism and match up to the content that the proposed publication has to offer? From a purely commercial standpoint, this is perhaps the most important question, for often publications and media houses that have successfully been in existence and have tremendous financial muscle and well-oiled distribution networks, have a distinct first moversâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; advantage and can not only sustain in the face of competition during the gestation period but can also tailor their products so as to take the new entrant on a turf that is still not quite his own! You would have to make sure that not only do you have the financial muscle and human resources to stand up to the competition, but also the ability to constantly alter your strategy as does your competitor, both in terms of the content you offer and the unique selling proposition that your publication sells itself on. 4. Can the proposed publication generate enough cutting edge content that can be cross-promoted? In this age of multiplicity of media outlets and media convergence, it becomes pertinent that such con-

tent which can sustain itself across media streams and be unique enough to be sold across geographies, be produced. This does not mean that only generic content should be produced. Far from it, this is an age of specialization and only niche content can sustain long enough to have a respectable shelf life. Yet, such content has to be relevant to as wide a consumer base within the target readership as possible and has to be so progressive as to survive competition on its own merit. The regulatory approvals that one needs before starting a print publication and the time it needs. For a complete lowdown of rules and regulations on registering a publication, just visit the website of the Registrar of Newspapers for India (RNI) at: https://rni.nic.in/welcome.htm. For detailed rules and regulations regarding FDI in the print media, please refer to the Manual of the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, Government of India: http://dipp.nic.in/manual/ manual_0403.pdf. Speculation is rife that the government will soon raise the present FDI limit of 26 percent, to 49 percent.

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blogs/opinion

Strategies for a new startup:

Simplify, Collaborate, Outsource /Vijay Anand

If there is another company that builds a product that fits into your requirement, and doesn’t cost an arm and a leg, buy. This goes a long way towards creating value all across the value chain.

Vijay Anand is an entrepreneur who has experience starting and building various technology startups, starting at the young age of 16. He is currently the Incubation Manager at RTBI, an incubator in IIT Madras that focuses on building rural-focused businesses. He is also the founder of Proto.in, India’s premier technology showcase event and is involved in various initiatives that are shaping up the emerging entrepreneurial scene in India. He blogs as The Startup Guy at www.vijayanand.name and tweets regularly at www.twitter.com/vijayanands.

There is an emerging model of a lean startup which is likened to a Gazelle, swift on its feet, fast, agile and can adapt to its surroundings for survival. Building “elephants” is the old way.

here is a fundamental problem in the way that we build businesses today in India—most of them take too long to mature. While building a stable company over a period of time is not at all a bad thing, slow growth (over long term) companies are rarely a deal that investors want to get involved in. Whatever said and done, what essentially the Silicon valley is really good at, is this—they create exits, and that is what accelerates the cycle of the entrepreneurship loop. The message is clear. In order for the entrepreneurial landscape to improve in India, we must see exits. Living proofs of young entrepreneurs who turn millionaires before they hit 30 are usually effective ways to spur more entrepreneurial efforts. But in order for that domino effect to kick in, there are a few things we must keep in mind; and especially if you are an entrepreneur, some of these might also help you build that lean, mean startup.

What You Won’t do Six months into the life of a startup, this is probably the clarity that startups need to have. Define what you do, and most of all define what you will not do. The focus that you get, the way your mind will think with those self-determined constraints will start opening your mind to new opportunities that lie deeper. Makes the company more rooted, grounded and also a contender for survival in the long run.

Buy Vs. Build Every time the senior management of a startup or a larger corporate organization come together to make a decision on this subject, I would bet that the judgment would rest with building it in-house. Every task is usually calculated in the kind of skill sets required, the cost of engineers, add to it a manager, and a few months time and the value of the product is arrived at. After that it’s a simple comparison of what is cheaper. What is not calculated is the distance that this

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side project will take you away from your core business. If there is another company that builds a product that fits into your requirement, and doesn’t cost an arm and a leg, buy. This goes a long way towards creating value all across the value chain.

for a web company this is easily doable, and what you usually get as side-benefits are programmers experienced in building large-scale systems, and also an understanding into the minds of people outside your echo chamber. You will gain more than you bargain for, if you do it right.

Extend those APIs. Please

One of the issues that startups will face time and time again is talent. This also goes back to the mindset that we need to break away from. We gladly evangelize outsourcing when the job comes to India, but in most cases never follow the rules ourselves.

Oftentimes I look at opportunities as a crack in the wall. In the technology space, this is usually the time when one S-curve is weaning off, and the other begins; and there are always opportunities that emerge at that horizon. You define an opportunity as a crack because you know that you will have limits on both sides. A startup can only grow to the size of the crack to fill that gap, but that’s a great entry into the market. It’s crucial if you are building products to build support, integration and partnerships with those around you—that’s how acquisitions are made. Every time I hear of a web company that does not even have APIs for other developers or companies to take that data and play with it, or companies that do not even publish ways and means of how a product works without covering it all under the terms of “proprietary”, we are looking at dinosaurs who are about to go extinct very soon.

Think beyond Boundaries One of the issues that startups will face time and time again is talent. This also goes back to the mindset that we need to break away from. We would gladly evangelize for outsourcing when the job comes to India, but in most cases never follow the rules ourselves. Outsourcing is not an India-only phenomenon. If you have to get a job done, and it can’t be done in India, you should outsource it to whichever region you can find talent in. Especially

Connect into your Clusters Focus, Focus and Focus. That’s the only advice I would give every startup. You have to do something well, and really, really well. The second step is to figure how someone could leverage that expertise and building relationships with them and get into a working relationship and go to the market together. Inevitably if it’s successful, they will make you an offer. In order for this to happen smoothly, the creation of new standards, processes, understanding current methodologies are very important. And the only way you can get to understand that is by tapping into the community of associations, experts, and other entrepreneurs who have pitched their tents in the land much before you did. This goes beyond networking, but sharing of wisdom, knowledge and insights freely amongst one another—that is what happens at a cluster. Find one that’s relevant to you, even if it’s beyond geographic boundaries and try to be actively part of it. The markets are changing. There is an increasing feeling that India has not lived up to its expectations in the startup world, not enough ground-breaking products yielded and in return a stump in the plans that are made for the future. It’s time to go back to the basics, focus on something small, be the best at it, and grow from there. If a few exits start happening, the rest will all follow. DARE.CO.IN | COLUMN | JANUARY 2010 45

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CONTEST Rent a rickshaw: For kids only Written by G Shankar, December 19, 2009 1. These vehicles can be altered a little to keep one or two kids in the back side. 2. Add a small motor - 50cc should be ok. 3. Give these members an opportunity to stand in their legs. 4. Advertisement panels can be fixed under corporate sponsorships under CSR.

Park for physically challenged Written by Kavya G R, December 17, 2009 Let me give a new business idea for physically challenged people: A public park with four tri-cycles: 1. Lending library: Were visitors can borrow some daily newspapers or small comics books for affordable bucks. Example: We can provide HINDU NEWSPAPER Re 1 for fifteen minutes.General magazine for Rs 3/- or even monthly member basis as Rs 50 / month. 2. Health drinks shop: Visitors can have some health drinks or healthy food which they can have before or after exercise. Example: We can provide a hygienic soup, malt milk, eggs etc. 3. Exercise equipment lending shop: We can lend some small exercise equipments like dumb-bell, hand grips, exercise bi-cycle etc. Example: We can provide dumbbell Rs 3 for fifteen minutes, exercise bicycle Rs 5 for ten minutes or even monthly member basis as Rs 75 per month. 4. Sports equipment lending shop: We can lend small sports equipment like shuttle bat, air ball for children. Advantages: 1. People like to read different daily news so they will use lending library. 2. People can get all in one place. They do not need to carry anything with them. They can workout in a pleasant atmosphere. 3. We can display some ads in our tricycle boards so physically challenged people can get additional income.

Luggage transport services Written by Snehalatha, December 03, 2009 Since a manual auto-rickshaw is very slow, it can be promoted as luggage transport service. People who have arrived in the bus station or the railway station with lot of luggage which cannot fit into the auto-rickshaw could get their luggage transported through the manual one, though it may arrive at the destination little later. The manual auto-rickshaw should be registered so that their complete details are available and also the luggage list to be maintained so that it is completely traceable and reliable service.

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CONTEST Provide a electronic device charger as a value add to travellers! Written by Ravi, December 16, 2009 My idea is to provide a solution for two different problems faced in the context of this picture. 1. The rickshaw-pullers look old and may not be willing to change and may be content with whatever they are earning already. The reason they are idle is also because people do not take these rickshaws either out of pity, or lack of speed. 2. The common man today handles a wide variety of digital electronic devices (mobiles, music players etc) and there is a need to constantly charge the batteries. The only option is to visit a friendly mobile shop or convenience store where he can charge. He then has to wait till his device gets charged. So, the proposal is to fix a dynamo to the cycle rickshaw and convert the mechanical energy to electrical energy. With amplifiers and associated circuitry, a charging point can be created on the rickshaw. So people now have more reasons to travel in the rickshaw and user can go where he wants while his device is charging. Telecom companies can use it to provide as many adapters as the devices they want to support. The rickshaw can then become an advertising board for the service provider as well. A nominal fee can be charged for extra service, if required. This way, the rickshaw-puller continues to do what he was doing. More people will use their service for added benefit. The solution is also green and benefits everyone.

Tricycle Ice Cream parlours Written by Vivek K, December 03, 2009 The ice cream business can be a very profitable one, to say the least, and our summers are not getting cooler thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s for sure. So with temperatures rising and people looking for a way to cool off, the ice cream vending tricycles can make a wave of profits.

Courier service Written by Pankaj Deshmukh, December 06, 2009 Start a courier service within the city, which is available in less cost so people prefer this and handicapped people earn money.

Bicycle Renting Written by Balaji R, December 06, 2009 In the image, I could understand various cues that include a) A fat person walking, b) A few handicapped individuals in their tricycle c) An Auto Rickshaws d) A park/garden (some green location). Keeping all these in mind, I feel a good business model should revolve around green revolution focusing mainly on green transport + fitness focused lifestyle. So, my business plan will be to start a bicycle renting venture serving to people who visit the garden/ park. Given the fact that a lot of Indians are of variety seeking nature, daily morning/evening walk can become too monotonous because of which they might lose interest gradually and discontinue the same. Cycling on the other hand could be quite joyous, provide variety in offering and will in fact help them in burning more calories. This can be run by a group of handicapped people initially sponsored by a trust.

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CONTEST WINNERS LAST MONTH'S BUSINESS IDEA CONTEST

CONGRATULATIONS! Please allow 30 days for dispatch of prizes.

Go Green Advertisement Rahul Thought Process: Looking for a solution which can generate some business in terms of advertisement and still touch upon basic needs to the people shown in the picture. Business Idea: Any advertisement company can adopt the vehicles and cover it from three sides and from the top at low cost. This will act as a shade for the person driving the vehicle and will give large area where the advertisement companies can print the ads. Each person should drive the vehicle/rickshaw they have around a specific area. It will act as a media without electricity and petrol and will stick to the concept of “green solutions for advertisement”. To attract people besides making the visual appeal, each of the driver should be strategically placed at spots like railway station, bus station or any tourist place. The person should be able to act as “help line” to help any new visitor in the city with basic information about the city, how to move around, bus schedules or any such modes free of cost. The goal of attaching the “concept of help line” is to attract people to come and interact with the rickshaw drivers and spend more time around the rickshaw to increase the probability of them viewing the advertisement on the rickshaw. While the person is helping with the queries they can also pass on any pamphlets if the advertiser wants to do that. Each driver should also be given some uniform (if possible in green color) to make some brand image out of it. This will also enable them to get spotted easily in busy places and will be one more advertisement tool.

Mobile Facilitation Centre Anoop A. Deshpande Business model We use various services for which periodical / frequent bill payments need be made. Electricity bills, telephone/ mobile phone bills, local authority taxes, Internet bills etc. in urban India, majority of customers availing such services belong to the service (employment) class. Very few banks, service providers offer working hours that suite customers of 9.30 - 6.30 working class. So payment of utility bills becomes a difficult task for such class. To mitigate this issue, various private service providers have started installing 24*7 electronic machines (which is a costly affair). Now here comes my business plan: 1. Gather handicapped/ partially disabled people (As seen in the photograph). 2. Contact all such utilities service providers and offer them the option of collection of cheques / payments for them. 3. Now once these partially disabled people are properly trained, they will be allotted different areas. This area allotment will be done considering the number of companies / offices are situated in a particular area. 4. Security deposits could be taken from these people. 5. Tricycles could also be provided to these people and which will also be used for advertisements. 6. Now, what these people will do is keep roaming in their allotted area for fixed working hours, collect payments for the bills etc at the end of day’s duty collect the proceed in the office from where the same will be forwarded to the respective service providers. 7. Company will earn commission on such collection. This business model is useful because: 1. It will prove to be a helping hand for handicapped/ disabled people. 2. It will be optimum utilization of available human resources. 3. Companies will get such services at cheaper rates together with the mobile advertisement on these tricycles. 4. Ultimately, clients will benefit, customers will benefit, a large section of such disabled people will benefit they will get work and regular remuneration, and the company will earn too.

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CONTEST

Write a business idea around this picture at http://www.dare.co.in/contest/jan10 The idea can be as crazy as you wish, but should somehow link to the picture. Detailed business plan is not required. Last date for submission: January 21, 2010.

Two winners chosen by the Editor. The prize will be shipped only within India. Winners of the last contest is announced on the following pages.

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investor of the month

ePlanet Ventures makes private equity investments on a global basis in companies where the application of innovation in technology and/or business models has the potential to create high-growth, category-dominant companies. DARE caught up with Chandrasekar Kandasamy, the managing director of the company, who shares his insights into the world of funding.

Chandrasekar Kandasamy Managing Director, ePlanet Ventures

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We primarily focus on companies or segments that are less capital intensive. We are looking at companies in the renewable energy space.

handrasekar has over 16 years of India-based private equity/venture capital experience. He has worked for five years with The Carlyle Group as a Director and Vice President. Prior to Carlyle, Chandrasekar was with Intel Capital as Manager of Strategic Investments in India. He began his career at ICICI Ventures where he worked for ten years. Chandrasekar was a World Bank-sponsored intern at Poly Ventures in New York, holds a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering from Anna University in Chennai, India, and earned an MBA from the Bharathidasan Institute of Management.

When a couple of investors come jointly, put in money, how do talks proceed with the company? How do negotiations happen? Take the case of Manthan Systems (where FIL Capital Advisors, IDG Ventures and DJF ePlanet Ventures have invested $15 million), it is not a new investment. Both ePlanet as well as IDG Ventures are existing investors. So we entered in 2007 with first round investment and last month we did the second round. In terms of who drove the deal, it was primarily Fidelity because they were the new investors in the company, so they looked independently in the company, the business, the team, etc. Based on that, they set the terms. Once the terms were set by Fidelity, both IDG and ePlanet contributed capital to maintain our old status. We usually get diluted when a new investor

comes in. So in order to avoid that, we also contributed capital to maintain our stake. It varies depending on what a company wants. Two things happen as part of this: we maintain our shareholding percentage, and also give the confidence to the investor that when the existing investor is willing to put in more money, on the same terms as the new investor, it shows that the company is doing really well. In another case where we invest together, one fund takes the lead role. There is always a lead investor and other co-investors. Depending upon who sourced the transaction, etc, that fund takes the lead role. But they discuss with other funds also about the terms, etc and eventually, one fund goes and drives the negotiations with the company. Otherwise, from the company’s perspective, talking to three funds independently and trying to close will be extremely difficult. So, the onus is not on the company that is seeking investment but it’s among the investors as to who is going to take the lead and how much stake will be taken? Suppose I meet the company first and I am not able to contribute the full amount that it needs. So I have to bring in other funds. I tell the company that I am trying to drive the deal but I cannot do the deal on my own, and I have to bring in other funds. The company agrees and I bring in the other funds. So from the company’s

perspective, I am the prime driver of the discussion. The onus is on me and the company to close the deal. If there are challenges such as the other funds wanting to bring in a new term, which is not acceptable to the company; then I try to resolve the issue. It is a collaborative process. From the company’s perspective, they normally like to work with the fund they are comfortable with. But it is unlikely that all three of us go and sit with the company and try and pull different terms. You have put in money in Continental Warehousing, which I believe is your first investment in the logistics sector in India. Why are you so upbeat about this sector, and are there some more such investments in the pipeline? From our perspective, infrastructure as a space itself is very interesting. This is primarily because India is a market where, compared to other developing countries, there are still a lot of things that need to be done. There are certain areas within infrastructure space where we put in a good amount of investment. Obviously we cannot invest in roads, transportation or power generation plants, as it requires huge amount of capital. We have identified some areas within the infrastructure space, where we can invest and move forward. One such area is logistics where Continental Warehousing has created a niche for itself. We found it exciting and that’s how we invested in it along with another investor. DARE.CO.IN | BIO | JANUARY 2010 51

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i Logistics as a space is quite interesting for us. I still believe there are a lot more companies/areas where we can invest. We primarily focus on companies or segments that are less capital intensive. We are looking at companies in the renewable energy space. How big is the fund size? We worked on two funds. First fund was $650 million, which is primarily in the early-stage technology and medical device space. That was the one we did along with another group DFJ. The second fund is a purely an independent ePlanet Fund which is slightly more than $130 million. It is more of a hybrid fund. So we have moved away a little bit from earlystage technology (not completely). We do a little bit of early-stage investments, primarily in the US and the European markets. But in Asia, we predominantly look at more growth capital transactions. We have also expanded our sectors from being purely technology and health-care to other sectors like logistics, healthcare as a whole, specialty retail, etc. What we do not invest primarily in is real estate, listed companies, and in commodities businesses like cements, steel, etc. Otherwise any sector where the opportunity looks interesting, we will move forward and invest. Is your $130 million fund solely focused on India or Asia? We operate on a global fund model. Wherever the market looks 52

We have seen situations where promoters have taken the money and then diverted the capital to other businesses and then possibly lose the money.

How much of this fund will be invested in Asia? Asia will probably consume almost 60 percent of our investment. We are on target to achieve that plan.

such. So if the company does well, we make money, and if it doesn’t, we lose money. If the company does badly due to genuine reasons like markets or technology issues, etc, we write off the investment and move on. We try to enforce the clause only when we know that the team is not good or the leader is not good. Only under these circumstances, we try to see how best we can get external management to run the show.

Although investors bring in money and mentoring, why are they still painted as devils? It primarily depends on the person. At least now people are aware about venture capital, private equity, etc. In 1989, when we started, no one was aware of it. Most promoters are concerned primarily with the term sheet where we talk of our rights and certain conditions, where a company can’t do anything without our approval. But most promoters also know that these conditions become enforceable only when there is a big challenge within the company. So we have seen situations where promoters have taken the money and then diverted the capital to other businesses and then possibly lose the money. But if you ask me if I have had an experience where we enforced any of these conditions in the last 20 years, I would say no. So these conditions have been put for moral obligation perspective. This is a high-risk investment. Equities don’t have any security as

New-age entrepreneurs are open to VC and PE funding but what about familyrun businesses? Are there apprehensions among them? We predominantly play in the growth capital stage. We do very little of early-stage venture capital. Most of our investments are midsized companies which already have a track record of investments. Some of the companies where we have invested are familyrun businesses. If you look at Continental Warehousing, it was started off as a family-run company and the son is now running the show. Yes, it is little bit challenging to convince the family-run companies as compared to individual promoters. This is because of the decision-making within the family. But we are seeing a big trend where the younger generation, after taking over the business, is willing to work with funds like us to take companies to the next level of growth. That is going to be one focus area for us. R

interesting, we go and invest. It is not a country-dedicated fund but since its an independent one, it’s a small fund. We wanted to get into the market and start investing. But going forward, this one will be a pretty large fund.

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The making of Pashmina Imran, a young man from Kashmir, quit his job to get into the family business of shawls and carpets, the journey that he is quite enjoying. /Yamini Upreti 54

mran Hussain Meer, a businessman from Kashmir, shares a smile as he displays the exquisite range of pashmina products such as shawl, scarves and stoles. At Pragati Maidan in New Delhi along with his elder brother and a few workers, Imranâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s trip has been sponsored by the Union Textiles Ministry. This young lad from Kashmir quit a cozy job at a multination-

al organization to join his family business of silk carpets and shawls. Instead of working for somebody, Imran felt that doing business would give him more independence and personal growth. Pashmina is a wool which comes from Pashmina goats who are found in the upper reaches of the Himalayas. The fiber is thin and is made from the hair of the neck of the goat.

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cost of a shawl starts from Rs 7,000 to Rs 8,000. The costliest shawl we have is of Rs 66,000”, says Imran. Businessmen and artisans from Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat and Punjab are accompanying Imran at Dilli Haat and Pragati Maidan. “We sell in wholesale to showrooms in Delhi and other places. Our customers know, so whenever the need arises, they call us.” says Imran. The recent economic slowdown left thousands of poor artisans out of job as the businesses started to shed flab in view of a depleting demand in the export market. But now slowly things are getting back to normal. “People like to do this work because they can do it in the comfort of their homes and since there are not many opportunities of livelihood,” says Imran. “The recession affected our business. The demand for these shawls went down sharply during the slowdown, and we could not reach our target of manufacturing 200 shawls,” he adds. “Customers prefer buying stuff from Kashmir as they think they might get at cheaper rates. For the last two-three years, Kashmir is a much safer place for tourists. We are expecting good sales not only in the state but across the country,” he says. Tourism in Kashmir is now

generating more revenues for the government but terrorism still has its shadow on businesses that are affected adversely. Imran is happy that his business is growing steadily. Asked as to what he would advice aspiring businessmen who want to get into the business of pashmina and silk, he says “Not many customers know the difference between pure and artificial pashmina. Thus it is important for businessmen like myself to be honest and not cheat the customer.” Imran adds that some corrupt businessman try to earn profits by calling blended stuff pashmina, and by selling it a a very high price. “Honesty and integrity is required to do this business as many poor artisans are associated with this business”. R

wool which Pashmina is a hmina goats comes from Pas the upper who are found in yas. The imala reaches of the H made from is fiber is thin and ck of the e the hair of the n wls are sha goat. Pashmina e. very expensiv

Original pashmina shawls are very expensive. Many artisans, weavers and dyers prepare work for days to prepare a pashmina product. The raw pashmina comes in pure white and off white colour. “The sale of pashmina is good during winters but sale of silk carpets is throughout the year.” says Imran. The cost of the final product depends on the designs and the cost of labour. “The DARE.CO.IN | SOCIETY | JANUARY 2010 55

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India

population issues and opportunities they hide

Problems associated with Indiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s population explosion have so far been treated as something concerning just the government and a few NGOs. But there are huge business opportunities that can be unlocked if these problems can be tackled, even marginally. It is high time that entrepreneurs made an attempt at tackling them /Krishna Kumar

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The three challenges

1 Reducing population growth rates 2 Reducing infant mortality 3 Increasing life expectancy

ndia, the world’s second most populous nation, has a huge population problem. Everyone understands and accepts that. Like someone I spoke to recently said, “It is there and nothing can be done about it.” This article argues that India has not one but three basic problems when it comes to population. Further, it makes the case that hidden in the resolution of the problems are huge business opportunities and that it makes

sense for business houses and entrepreneurs to tackle the problem along with the government and NGOs.

1. Reducing population growth rates The first of India’s three population problems is the most accepted one—the huge population. At 1.12 billion in 2007, our population is only marginally behind China’s 1.33 billion and way ahead of third placed USA’s 304 million.

The six most populous countries in the world. Even if India were to reduce its population growth rate down to zero (population remaining constant at current levels), the population problem that we are facing will not go away and its rank as the second most populous country is unlikely to change. DARE.CO.IN | OPPORTUNITIES | JANUARY 2010 57

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As can be seen from the graph, while the large population base itself is a problem, the bigger issue is that population growth has maintained a steady pace over the years. The first step here is to bring the population growth rate to zero so that the countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s population remains steady and does not grow further. Now, how do we reduce population growth? See box on replacement fertility rate to get an overview of how much the population growth has to be curtailed by. The traditional approach has been the use of contraceptive methods and a move towards planned pregnancy. The methods for this have been improving education and awareness and improving the access to and use of contraceptive methods.

Only 13.4% of the target audience uses temporary contraception of any form. To give a comparison, in 1994, the world average of IUD usage was four times that in India, while for

female sterilization, it was less than half that in India. Let us look at the data for contraceptive usage in a slightly different way.

Usage of contraception Traditionally, the usage of contraception is popularized by the government and by NGOs. In spite of many years of continued attempt, a majority of the population does not use contraception. And even in the usage, there are skews.

There is a very clear skew towards older segments of the population when it comes to contraception usage. Combine this with the fact that the overwhelmingly preferred method of contraception used is sterilization, and a very clear need emerges to promote temporary methods of contraception, if we are to achieve our population growth rate objectives. Given that the average age at marriage for Indian women is 19.3 years, this graph is chilling evidence as to why population control measures have failed to achieve their objectives. On the flip side, it also tells us where to focus and where the opportunities lie.

The opportunity

A majority of the population does not use any contraceptive methods. And of those that use, a majority (29.6 +0.8 = 30.4%) again are sterilized. Sterilization is normally a final state of contraception. So, those using temporary methods of contraception are just 13.4% of the population. The opportunity and market for improving this rate even slightly is huge. 58

The government and NGOs are the primary drivers for the popularization of birth control and contraception. The current market is characterized by either sluggish demand or a combination of subsidized brands in the rural and low-income areas and high price brands in large towns and cities, with no middle ground. A significant part of the focus in the past has been on sterilization. There is very clearly a case for changing the rules of this game and for

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intervention and innovation, both from the private and social entrepreneurship sectors as along with the social issues there are clear business opportunities in bringing the rate of population growth down. If temporary contraceptive methods start being used by just 10 percent more of the female population in the reproductive age, that would mean an increase in the market for temporary contraception by 56 million people! Even 1 percent more of the population using temporary contraceptive methods will increase the addressable audience by a notso-insignificant 5.6 million people!

2. Reducing infant mortality One of the saddest things about India’s high population and growth rate is that it is happening in spite of high infant mortality rates. Infant mortality is the number per thousand live births of infants below the age of one year who die. I have used another measure—under5 mortality rate—the mortality rate of infants below the age of 5 years, per thousand live births. India currently has an under-5 mortality rate of 76, down from 115 in 1990 (WHO data). This places us 143rd out of 195 countries in increasing order of infant mortality rates.

Why is reducing under-5 mortality (and infant mortality) important? Keeping aside the moral aspects, a low under-5 mortality rate indicates a robust healthcare system with good pre-natal, natal and post-natal care being available. The mortality rate also has a direct bearing on a number of other social and quality of life indicators like the life expectancy rate Huge opportunities in the health care sector await being unlocked, particularly in providing quality healthcare in a manner that can easily scale up.

The graph above plots life expectancy at birth against under-5 mortality rate. Note that the x axis (mortality rate) is in an inverse scale. That is lower mortality rates are towards the right. The whole world can be divided into those with high mortality rates and low life expectancy (on the left, Sub-Saharan Africa, for example) and those with high life expectancy and low mortality under 5 rates (like high income OECD countries). Then there are countries like the UAE that have successfully transcended the gap between the two to move from low life expectancy – high under-5 mortality to high life expectancy – low mortality under-5 levels. India, as can be seen from the graph, is attempting to bridge this divide, but still has a long way to go – from mortality rates in the higher seventies to single digit figures and from life expectancy rates in the early sixties to the seventies and beyond. DARE.CO.IN | OPPORTUNITIES | JANUARY 2010 59

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Replacement fertility rate When population growth becomes zero, we will be at what is known as the replacement fertility rate. This is the theoretical number of children per woman at which the number of newborns equals number of deaths. For India, Population Action International calculated this ratio to be 2.34 in 2006. Against this, The government has a target fertility rate of 2.1, and actual fertility rates are estimated to be 2.72 for 2009. In order to understand these numbers, we need to look at the macro picture of the total population. To take a very simplistic view, Total population = 1.14 billions Sex ratio = 993 Female population = 1.14billions x 993/2000 = 566 millions At current fertility rate, population added over 34 years = 566 x 2.72 = 1540 millions At replacement fertility rate, population added over 34 years = 566 x 2.34 = 1324 millions At government target rates, population added over 34 years = 566 x 2.1 = 1188 millions Note: 34 years come from the fact that reproductive age is considered to be from 15 years to 49 years. This calculation is very simplistic and is for illustration only. Therefore, if we want to achieve population stability, we need to reduce births by 1540-1324= 216 millions over the next 34 years. (Actually, the number will be higher, when we take into consideration declining infant mortality rates).

3. Increasing life expectancy India today has an average life expectancy at birth of 64.7 years (2005-10). This splits further into a male life expectancy that is slightly lower at 63.2 and

female life expectancy that is slightly higher at 66.4 years. In comparison, the Japanese have a life expectancy of 82.6 and the Vietnamese have a life expectancy of 74.2 years.

Life expectancy in turn is a measure of many other thingsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; quality of healthcare, quality of life, etc. Generally speaking, life expectancy is also a measure of literacy and income levels.

The graph above plots life expectancy against gross national income per capita. Clearly, those on the right-top quadrant are the richer countries that have a good healthcare system. While one can argue whether income comes first or whether higher life expectancy comes first, the inter-linkages between the two cannot be ignored. Better and longer life can lead to more income as well as vice versa. The graph shows that India is attempting to reach the right-top quadrant, but the path is longâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;per capita incomes have to increase ten-fold. On the other hand, even incremental increases can bring about huge benefits. 60

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(Source: Visualization from Gapminder World, powered by Trendalyzer from www.gapminder.org). While the macro picture gives us an overview, the on-ground situation sees huge variations depending on geography, current literacy levels, religion and a plethora of other factors. In this graph, for example, Delhi, which has more than twice the per capita income of Kerala also has twice the infant mortality rate, while Andhra Pradesh, which has a per capita income profile similar to that of Kerala has more than three times the infant mortality rate. Obviously, there is a need to drill further down and to apply the think global, act local philosophy in this context also.

The opportunity Taking a very simplistic approach, if the average life expectancy of the population were to increase by one year, we are talking of 1.14 billion man-years of markets being created. Given a per capita income of Rs 38,084 in 2008-09, and assuming that figure wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t go down, we are talking of an additional income generation of at least Rs 43,000 billion over one lifespan, or approximately Rs 700 billion every year! If even half of this amount gets spent on goods and services, it is an additional Rs 350 billion (USD 70 billion) a year; not small change by any measure.

Action required The three basic challenges we are

talking about are not independent ones. They are interlinked, and changing one of them will end up affecting the other two. So, while we discuss them separately, action would probably need to be combined. The primary elements of the mix that will provide answers to the population issues are all known. They are literacy, health education, contraception and basic healthcare. There is no rocket science involved in any of these. However, they have been left as intervention areas for the government and for a few NGOs. As we can see, though, there are huge business benefits (apart from social and quality-of-life benefits) to be had from addressing the population problem. Even small changes

to the current situationâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;as small as one percent differenceâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;can bring into play huge new markets. So, it is high time that businesses attempted to address these issues using innovative, sustainable and productive methods. A large part of the problem lies at the bottom of the economic pyramid. The current focus of many businesses on this segment to increase their share of the pie provides a context to argue for businesses to start addressing and finding sustainable solutions to basic problems that will in turn end up expanding the pie for everyone. Note: All calculations in this article have been simplified for easy understanding and should be taken as indicative only. R DARE.CO.IN | OPPORTUNITIES | JANUARY 2010 61

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photoblogsp Irrigating Means

rrigation of crops in India is hugely dependent on rainy water. With many spells ofdry monsoon, the water table in many areas has gone down considerably. In Punjab where water used to be found at a depth of 100 feet around ten years back, the situation has gone worse and people are digging bores up to 250 feet. According to some sources, in six of the countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 20 major river basins, water resources are depleting. By the year 2025, five more basins will become scarce and by 2050, only three basins in India will remain water sufficient, which poses a situation where Indian crops would find it difficult to survive. The opportunity lies in developing seeds that require lesser amount of water and perhaps shorter time of cultivation. Dealing with the water shortage, tapping rain water in an effective way throughout the country could provide some relief. Water-treatment plants, water desalination, and water recycling could also be the solutions. (Photo taken at the dry bed of Chitravati River, Puttaparti, Andhra Pradesh) Author: Vivek Kumar

Solar Water Heater

olar energy remains one of the most abundant yet most untapped areas. Admittedly, there are many barriers to successful implementation of equipments and plants. Apart from this, irregular nature of this form also bars its entry into the consumer market. However, many domestic, institutional and even industrial users have started using solar energy as a replacement for the dependence on thermal power. Solar water heaters are one of the most commonly used domestic products after solar cookers. If you go around a big town or city, you will notice this site (shown in the picture) quite regularly. Apart from manufacturing of these equipments, the opportunity lies in franchising, distributorship and even small-scale dealership. (Photo taken in Sector 15 Part-I, Gurgaon, Haryana) Author: Vivek Kumar

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sphotoblogs A chef prepares mouth-watering delicacies at a restaurant in Bangalore

ateries across India are finding themselves in a tight spot with food prices sky-rocketing every week. The food price index rose 19percent over the corresponding period for the week ending November 28. Many a restaurants are contemplating reviewing their price list to contain the effect of rising prices. Author: Vimarsh Bajpai

A Cell Site

n almost every city, town and even village, you will see these elevated and lengthy structures positioned. Some of them are put even on roof of houses and shops. Cell sites or mobile phone towers, as they are known, consist of a tower for mounting antennas, transmitter/receivers, transceivers, digital signal processors, control electronics, a GPS receiver for timing, and uninterrupted electrical power sources. With growing number of mobile users and even the companies, the demand of these towers is increasing. Apart from leasing space for positioning of these towers, there is a good opportunity for manufacturing, mounting, and maintenance (servicing) of these towers and cell sites. Are you looking to get your connection established in this? (Photo taken in Sector 15 Part-I, Gurgaon, Haryana) Author: Vivek Kumar

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Exchange Submit exchange requests at: website: http://www.dare.co.in/ marketplace.htm OR email: dare@cybermedia. co.in or SMS ‘DARE <your msg>’ to 56677

eepak Bijaya Padhi had a business proposal that could breakeven in the first year itself and there is a ever-expanding market readily available for the services. He was looking for funds. Response Do send me the proposal as we are in to arranging the funds from abroad. Sandeep Upadhyay

raveen had some prototypes of solar energy applications and wanted to implement this in his hometown and other places. He was looking for ideas and guidance. Response We are already developing some solar products. We can help you or can workout jointly. If interested do revert. Kushal Parmar

lakananda Sikdar was interested in manufacturing and retailing the same being in NCR. He was looking for both mentoring and financial assistance. Response Send me your entire details, including your mail-id so that I can contact you. Niyam Agarwal

. Raju was into the pisiculture business in West Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh and wanted to turn it into an agrotourism destination. He needed guidance. Response Though I’m not an expert in agro-tourism, hailing from travel trade I can certainly give you a tourist’s perspective. The biggest attractions a tourist might have while visiting an agro-tourism destination are local agricultural activities in which s/he might be able to participate and get hands dirty, and local authentic food. Since you own coconut plantations a lot of activities, like climbing the trees to harvest coconut, making

of various products sourced from coconut tree such as coir etc can be part of activities your place might want to offer. Then with fish tanks you could guide tourists with various types and characteristics of different fish species. I’m sure you will have resources to cook local food too. And then market your place with tour operators. To start with get in touch with us. :-) If you really happen to start such a project, do let us know. We would love to promote the place. Siddharth Gurjar

.P. Singh had been working in the development sector in the area of sustainable livelihood for the last 15 years in Madhya Pradesh and was looking for experts, partners, ideas, advice and mentors on the subject to proceed further. Response Kindly e-mail me your details. I have a client who is already doing this activity on behalf of DGR. Sudhir Taori

ayant Kale had infrastructure where hehe could have two shifts for 15 hours at the moment, with at least 15 agents in each shift for this project. He was looking for clients who wanted to outsource. Response I want to outsource my work. If interested contact me. Kushal Parmar

ranab Debnath was looking for individuals, private or public limited companies who would like to involve in doing bamboo business on a large scale. Response Are you in need of regular bamboo products for UK & EU markets? What are the items you may require? Pease. let me know more details about your requirements and products. Alamelu

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.S. Sandha had been involved in evolving and running several businesses that have a wide social footprint. His venture is a project called ‘SoyFit,’ under which he established a complete system of decentralized production of soya-based health products in geographically spread out microindustries (called ‘franchisees’), under the same raw material, quality standards and brand. He wanted to get in touch with small entrepreneurs willing to set up franchisee units in their areas. Response Kindly send us more details regarding ventures and opportunities in same... Deepak Singh We are from Hyderabad, India, would like to know your requirement and exploring the possibility to associate with you. Pardhasaradhi I am interested in knowing details about your project. I would like to take up the franchise in/near Pune. Siddharth Limaye

e are a company presently engaged in field of transportation, materials supply and construction. We have experience in handling small scale consignments with some of reputed companies like L&TECC (TISCO, Jamshedpur), IVRCL pipeline (Bihar), BSCC&C (earthwork), etc. Presently we have our own crusher in Jamshedpur for supply of stone chips with L&TECC. At present, our financial situation is not very sound and we need to finish our projects with L&TECC and also bid for fresh contracts from other companies. We require a person who can help us in providing financial assistance. It’ll be a pleasure if the person joins hands with us to fine tune our work and expand as there are a lot more opportunities in Tatanagar and nearby places. Ken Patel

have fabricated a working model of a rotary vane IC engine based on

my own patent no 149237 of 1979. I have made some improvements in the original but as the patent has expired, I am looking for investment partners to promote the same. G Parashuram

anjay Sharma had a concept on remote healthcare services and was looking for people who want to be a part of the core team and also angel funding to kick off the pilot. Response I want to contact for this project. Mukesh Mehta I am interested in knowing more. Srinivas Kaja

, along with my friend, am running a food catering company called “Sakkat food”. After launching our catering ideas successfully, we are planning to start an outlet here. We have a very special, unique and “one of its kind” concept about the outlet. We are looking forward for a right investor to be a part of our business journey. Rohit Bhat

e are Anveshan Biotech. We are into plant tissue culturing. We have setup a lab with the capacity of producing 1.2 million plants annually. We are currently propagating Banana Gradnain(G9) variety. We are looking for people or company who would like to market our G9 Banana plants. We are also interested in any plant propagation outsourcing opportunity. Arvind

am from Bangalore. I have huge interests towards photography, I am very interested to host a “Mobile PhotoGraphy” contest & exhibition at Bangalore. I request for sponsor(s) and guide to organize the event. I am ready to join if any one wish to join me as a partner to make this event a big success. M Guruvishnuvardan

e have a play-school/preschool concept with day-

wise curriculum. We are looking for a channel partner to promote franchiser/franchisee module. Those with 300-400 sq. ft. office space or ready to start a play school in Chennai, Bangalore, Mumbai, or Delhi can become our channel partner. PK Janjua

am looking for individuals, private or public limited companies who would like to involve with us in doing bamboo business on a large scale. I am basically based on London UK and have access to UK and EU markets. Punit Sethia

am not a big player in the Indian electronics industry to invest in crore, but I want to start my own business based on importing solar products from China. I have no knowledge in importing any product and its associated intricacies like import duty, etc. Could you please guide me through the process? C L Joshi

e are a start up in education sector in NCR and now planning to enter in this play school domain and looking for suitable partners, if anyone is interested then feel free to contact. Kabeer

have a hearing aid business in Kolkata and now I want to make it pvt. Ltd. or ltd. company. So I need professional guidance from individual or body in Kolkata. Please contact me with fee structure in total. Krishna Gopal Sengupta

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Digging gold in rural India This is very nice idea, particularly for farmers having farm land nearby tourist places, big cities. Nowadays every one in the city has a busy life and needs some relaxation, which he can definitely get in a natural atmosphere. Many people have a mind to purchase farm land, but it is not possible. If they get the opportunity to spend a weekend in a rural area, they would definitely like to visit nearby farms and enjoy rural food like jowar roti and vegetables prepared in special rural style without any of the formalities followed in high-class restaurants and hotels. Hence this is a great opportunity for those who own farmland near cities with availability of water. Vilas

magazine

The Microentrepreneurship of a Roadside Tea Vendor It makes interesting reading and is an accurate analysis of the business dynamics of the small vendor. It always pays to buy better quality teas as fewer grams are required per cup. Also tea consumption starts to increase with the advent of rains and peaks in the winters. So head shelters are a must. An AC outlet does not provide the gossip mongering and politics masala flavor of the roadside vendor. Shiv Kumar Saria

blogs

Which Mobile Would You Buy? I’d say the flashlight feature is one of the most useful features on a mobile phone. People in the metros (especially Mumbai) don’t realize it as they have electricity 24-hours a day (lucky guys ;-)). But in most other places around India, where power failures and power cuts are the norm of life, this can really be a lifesaver. Sunil Suresh Micro-level opportunity around Sanskrit? I have had the itch to learn Sanskrit since long. I also feel bad why they had French alternative language in our school rather than Sanskrit. Not that we hate French or other languages. There should be central and state government initiative to allow exchange programs at the school levels to accommodate students and propagate the language. Learning the language even to elementary levels would definitely help. There is also a village in our country that has a majority of the locals speaking in Sanskrit. Aseem

blogs

All you want to know about Indian trains in just 7 web sites Thanks for compiling the directory of rail sites, and even providing analytical reviews. The first two websites listed above are really good and stand out as very well-designed websites, generally speaking. I have travelled by rail in Europe and the US. The trains there are fast and good, but the websites and tracking info are just horrible. Frankly, the western countries could take guidance from the above websites. Sanjay magazine

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feedback 66

Understanding how a classifieds website operates Quickr may be ‘quicker’ than the rest but at the end of the day, it’s one among many sites offering the same service with the same business model. Anyone else reading this article may pick up a hint or two—if they have missed any trick so far in the first place. Rediff, Sulekha, Hotfrog, etc are all providing people a free forum to buy and sell. It is nice to know Quickr wants to do big things with all that money to play with but what they are offering is not one-of-a-kind by any stretch of the imagination. For even a fraction of the money that VCs are offering such sites—I could have fun expanding and marketing my site and make money out of it as well. Manali Rohinesh

SMS “DARE <your comments, questions or suggestions>” to 56677 or Drop us an email: dare@cybermedia.co.in

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Inviting all student entrepreneurs to a Last Date of Registration : th

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YouTube Is Not The Only One! YouTube is by far the largest and the most visited video sharing resource on the Internet. Yet, there are some viable alternatives to this behemoth, some specialized, others employing similar models as YouTube. DARE takes a comprehensive look at some such alternatives.* /Aman Malik

ver since its inception in February 2005, YouTube (http:// www.youtube.com/), founded by three former Pay Pal employees Chad Hurley, Jawed Karim and Steve Chen and now owned by Google, has become the predominant site on the Internet for uploading and sharing videos online. It claims to cater to over a billion users globally, whhile in the US, it has nearly a 41 68

percent share of the video sharing market, its nearest competitor being Hulu (http://www.hulu.com/), as yet a US-only premium service. While Hulu is not available to users in the rest of the world, there are other viable alternatives to YouTube that use either the same model as YouTube or variants of it. Before comprehensively listing all these viable alternatives, it would

be pertinent to look at the generic platforms that such video sharing websites offer and how they work. 1. The â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;YouTube modelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;: In YouTube and several other sites like MetaCafe, Veoh, VuMe, Vimeo etc, previously loaded videos can be viewed by anyone (except if the circulation of the said video is prohibited in a certain geographical area). Videos can range from mundane

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home videos to professionally posted ones. Channels offering professional videos like full length movies and movie trailers, documentaries, episodes of dramas, training videos etc garner some advertising. Yet, speculative figures available in the public domain suggest that YouTube, despite having over a billion people logging in during a year, does not recover costs incurred on storage and bandwidth from its advertising revenue. Sites like Vimeo, besides offering free hosting space, also offer premium hosting at affordable rates, for prices in the range of US$6O per annum. The premium account allows you to upload videos as many times as you want in a week, with a maximum weekly quota of 5GB (1GB per film). Others like Vidoeegg use the cost per engagement (CPE) model, in which the content being uploaded is priced on how much value it generates for the advertiser. 2. The ‘Ustream model’: Sites like Ustream (http://www.ustream.tv/) allow users to stream videos live in real time. In other words, users can set up a ‘broadcasting station’ of their own, with just a webcam and a working broadband connection. Media companies and individual users also use such services to broadcast television channels from all over the world, often embedding such streams to their own sites or blogs, in the hope of generating advertising revenue during important sporting or entertainment events that are webcast. 3. Dedicated sites offering live broadcast TV: Sites like Livestation and WWITV are two of the best out of a list of several hundreds of websites that aggregate live broadcast TV streams from across the world. So, if you want to catch a certain entertainment channel out of say Albania, sitting in the comfort of your room in Delhi, all you need is a working broadband connection! Sure, the quality is often not HD and sometimes some links do not work, but

then free lunches are well, never totally free, are they? Moreover, if you want to pay for such content, there are premium versions of such offerings which, upon a small fee, one time or periodic, offer high quality streaming of the same channels or of others, not dished out gratis. Having looked at the generic models using which video sharing and streaming sites operate, it would be worthwhile to look at some viable alternatives to YouTube, which still has a predominant position in this space. Vimeo (http://www.vimeo.com/): This is an intelligent video hosting site that helps you ideate so that you can produce interesting videos. A site meant initially for film-makers,

it also allows you to limit access to your videos by altering your privacy settings accordingly. Also, videos are neatly grouped into relevant channels, something that makes navigating this site extremely easy. To put it simply, this site, which has some mature content, is one of the better alternatives to YouTube. While the casual creator can join free, the more serious creator, who wants to upload high quality content can join in as a premium user by paying a fee. Metacafe (http://www.metacafe. com): One of the most popular alternatives to YouTube, its main USP is that is offers only short videos, which are mainly entertainment-oriented and which people usually access several times a day to break the monoto-

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ny. The content is all user-generated and user-rated. The site does not allow hard news videos or general webcam chatter or even videos on serious subjects. It merely dishes out fun, and it has an audience. Atom (http://www.atom.com/): Promoted by AtomFilms, a division of MTV, it is a video sharing site that has some high quality content, from user-generated stuff to channels that host popular TV shows. This site however is content-heavy and slower than YouTube. Also, the search function could be a tad better. Clipshack (http://www.clipshack.com/): Run by Reality Digital

Inc. it is more or less patterned on YouTube, only that it is not as exhaustive in its content as the latter. BlipTV (http://www.blip.tv/): This is a very good source for independent shows that may otherwise never make it to the TV screen. It does however store general private videos just like YouTube does, but its claim to fame is good TV-quality content that does not make it to the airwaves. Dailymotion (http://www. dailymotion.com/in): A neat video sharing site owned by a French company by the same name, it offers neatly packaged user-generated content and has strict rules against

any explicitly adult material. A good platform to show off your creative instincts. There are specialized channels on many topics and the videos load fairly quickly, yet the site is not particularly exhaustive. The interface though is good and with some effort, it could become a popular resource. Flukiest (http://www.flukiest. com/): Video sharing is just one of the services this social networking site offers. Artists, photographers, musicians, directors, designers, musicians, writers, producers and technologists wanting to show off their creations can benefit greatly from this site. FLURL (http://www.flurl.com/): FLURL is a neat site that has a set of pre-defined categories under which you can upload and share videos. The interface is clean and videos load quickly. Yet, one sore point is that the site has explicit adult content, although there are content-filters. Live Video (http://www.livevideo. com/): Offers all the usual features of a video sharing site, with the added advantage of allowing recording video directly from webcam. REVVER (http://revver.com/ revver/): A site meant mainly for the creative lot, it is one of those few platforms that share revenue that content posted by you either on the site itself or embedded into another site earn. Yet, the dismal number of times the â&#x20AC;&#x153;most watchedâ&#x20AC;? videos are actually watched indicates that the site attracts very little traffic, the reason for which is not apparent. Spike (http://www.spike.com/): Was launched by iFILM, but is now a part of Viacom. Has the hottest new videos and movie clips and allows users to upload their clips too. Uvouch (http://www.uvouch. com/): Apart from the usual features of a video sharing site, it allows users to directly import content from other sites.

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users globally. Users can set up individual â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;broadcast channelsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; and speak to the world around them. Several public events ranging from sports events to space shuttle launches are streamed live on Ustream round the clock. Videoegg (http://www.videoegg. com/): This is well laid out advertising platform that offers both marketers and individual artists a neat platform with an easy interface, to share content. For clients with serious traffic, it also offers a revenue sharing mechanism. Viddler (http://www.viddler. com/): Another site, which apart from the run-of-the-mill features allows users to directly upload content from their camera. Also offers a revenue sharing mechanism. Zoopy (http://www.zoopy.com/): This is a South African video sharing site with a very simple interface. Worth a look. Veoh (http://www.veoh.com/): Has high quality videos with a very simple layout and good lists. Does have mature adult content, but the filters are effective. Ustream (http://www.ustream. tv/): A prominent live video streaming site that is very popular with WWI TV (http://wwitv.com) and Livestation (http://www.livestation. com/): These are two of the best sites on the Internet that do a good job in aggregating free-to-air as well as paid television channels from all over the world. Two reasons make them better than most other sites. First, they do not require any new software to be downloaded and second, these sites have a truly global reach, aggregating channels from almost every country. *This list has deliberately excluded Google Video as well as those sites that were hosted in languages other than English and/or hosted explicit adult content without any filtering. R DARE.CO.IN | STRATEGY | JANUARY 2010 71

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blogs/opinion

The Brand Harmony Will there ever be an India Philharmonic orchestra and what that means for brands

/Rupin Jayal

The first lesson is to provide an underlying set of values but to keep refreshing and innovating features and services. The first step therefore is to set down the immutable core of the brand.

The author is Director-Strategic Planning at M&C Saatchi.

atching one of the massive western classical music orchestras playing, with a wide diversity of instruments, a collection of highly talented musicians, all playing in marvellous unison, makes one wonder why Indian music does not lend itself to a similar format. We have a wide variety of wind, string and percussion instruments; many talented musicians and we have structured music that could form the basis of such an orchestra. It is argued that our musical tradition has within it both the structured and the spontaneous and therefore lends itself better to the individual performance. Jazz has a similar structure yet there are legendary jazz bands. Why does an orchestra playing Indian music sound far less inspiring as compared to an individual performance of the same raga? And is there something here to learn for the brands? Whether you consider our dominant faith â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Hinduism or our music, there is an omnipresent creative tension between structure and improvisation. The tension is not adversarial but one that actually helps create a sense of proprietorship. The structure provides comfort and security while the space for innovation and improvisation allows for personal ownership. This may well be one of the major reasons why Hinduism continues to flourish while most of the religions of the world that existed during the dawn of Hinduism are now extinct. This ability to combine

an overall structure with the freedom to improvise enables infinite interpretations and a sense of integration rather than mere adherence. Interestingly that seems to be the direction towards which brands, internationally, are moving. Whether it is user-generated content, mass customisation, engaging people to contribute towards product innovation, CRM, etc marketing the world over is increasingly looking outwards for inspiration, involvement and hence deep engagement between brands and the people they seek to attract. Is there a way that we can take lessons from our ancient heritage of music and create some simple guidelines that could be used for brands?

Familiar structure refreshed by continuous inspiration Indian music provides a structure but allows for individual interpretation. It is able to symbiotically combine a formal framework with spontaneity so that every performance of the same raga is familiar and yet different even when played by the same artiste on two different days. Hence there is continuous innovation within a familiar form. The structure is the skeleton and improvisation is the flesh and brain that creates individuality and distinctiveness. So the first lesson is to provide an underlying set of values but to keep refreshing and innovating features and services. The first step therefore is to set down the immutable core of the brand. This needs to

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Brands have espoused understanding of their audiences as being intrinsic to the building demand and long term values.They have also claimed to continuously evolve to meet their needs and desires.

have three characteristics: 1. The core must distinguish your brand’s values from those of its competitors. Words and phrases such as “leading”, “best in class”, “providing customer delight”, etc must be avoided at all costs. Whether it is the soul of craftsmanship for Rolls Royce, imaginative simplicity for Apple, driving delight for BMW, institutionalised iconoclasm for Virgin, trust and reliability for Toyota, delightfully innovative engineering for Honda, outlaw for Harley Davidson, high performance engineering art for Ducati, you can usually describe for yourself what distinguishes a brand you respect versus the grey mass of its competitors This forms the basic structure of your brand - just like the basic formal structure of a raga 2. It must be able to withstand the test of time. In a world of evanescent brands it will be those with immutable, resilient, differentiating and inspirational core values that will be the aristocracy while the others will merely be visitors; here today, vanished tomorrow. This brand lineage must be rigorously protected by all employees regardless of their role within the company. They must accept, internalise and safeguard the core just like succeeding generations of musicians have done with our rich heritage of the ragas 3. Whatever your favourite raga—the notes that distinguish it are very familiar. They delineate the core of the raga with great simplicity allowing the musician to weave in complex interpretations. The more complex the core structure, the less room there would be for creative improvisation and interpretation. The nucleus of your brand must be simple so that it can allow for the maximum creative interpretation by its custodians as well as those who form a relationship with it. Hence Porsche’s simple core design philosophy has created a wide diversity of vehicles cutting across categories, many of which Porsche purists

would baulk at, yet achieving a clearly identifiable and distinctive Porsche “look” to them—from the classic 911 to the Cayenne SUV a true “sports” utility vehicle, to the Panamera sports saloon. Each vehicle is a sports car first and whatever category its fits into, is merely a way of classifying it. An inspirational case of structure and innovation symbiotically coexisting.

The need for continuous improvisation India is a young country in so many ways yet as the cliché goes it has an ancient soul. Again an inherent duality. The ancient soul represents the immutable structure that has flourished through thousands of years despite the challenges of huge ethnic diversity and continuous clashes with invading civilisations. It has flourished through constantly being refreshed by reinterpretation and improvisation. It has helped to spawn other faiths and spiritual philosophies that continue to maintain an umbilical link to it. It has allowed for assimilation rather than exclusion. Being a young country we seek continuous improvisation as the evolution of mindsets and attitudes accelerate and also as a propeller of burgeoning optimism and the sheer excitement of change. Hence strictly adhering to a rigid core and not changing is a death knell. Changing just for the sake of it without an anchoring brand “soul”, similarly so. Hence while Maruti continues to provide great value for money hatchbacks, its portfolio today is at the absolute cutting of design innovation for hatchbacks in India. While the Swift is fairly economical and practical, what has sold it is its distinctive look. Yet what has also kept the waiting lists long is Maruti’s adherence to its core principles of service that it pioneered when it started operations in India and where (as succeeding JD Power survey results have proven) it continues to lead the industry despite its massive volumes. DARE.CO.IN | COLUMN | JANUARY 2010 73

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The days of mass brands, mass programs and limited choices are long gone. People increasingly desire to be active participants in the evolution of the brands with which they feel a sense of affinity.

Interaction

Adaptability

In the world of western music you respect the musicians and the music they are playing by sitting silently even during the breaks between movements within a particular concerto, sonata or symphony. In India you enthusiastically applaud while the musician is playing. Sitting silently would rob the performance of half its value. When many Indian audiences watch a western classical music program they applaud between movements much to the frustration of the performers. When many foreigners witness an Indian classical music performance they may even applaud when the musician is tuning his or her instruments, much to amusement of the Indians present. This interaction and vocal “interperformance” between musician and audience is critical for a truly inspired recital. A silent audience would sap the performance of vital energy. It also exemplifies the need for the artiste to really understand his or her audience to ensure the maximum delight for them and elicit the most enthusiastic response. The same is increasingly true for brands. The days of mass brands, mass programs and limited choices are long gone. People increasingly desire to be active participants in the evolution of the brands with which they feel a sense of affinity. Pepsi Foods have demonstrated their enthusiasm for inclusion by actively campaigning for people to contribute recipes and flavour ideas. Other food brands have done so too. Luxury automobile brands allow such an infinite variety of options that the prospective owner virtually “designs” his own car. The iPhone is merely a platform - the huge variety of applications ensures that every iPhone owner can actually customize it depending upon her passions and interests. Interaction creates engagement which if nurtured leads to brand loyalty leading to some brands actually becoming soulmates.

In western music, even for individual performances, most artistes adhere to “scripted” written music. When performing a raga, the artiste uses his or her memory, countless rehearsals and practise and the guidance of his or her guru as the foundation. However this also allows for adaptation to the audience’s mood and to the emotions within the performer. The script is guidance but not commandment. In a society where mores are evolving so rapidly, being driven even faster by the catalyst of technology, brands need to adapt. What was opposed is becoming more acceptable. Nowhere is this more evident than with our increasing comfort with sexuality. Brands that used to promote enhancing fairness as a means for women to get married now focus on how a blemish-free complexion can help achieve career success and men have been brought into the ambit of fairness solutions too. Brands are taking on activist platforms reflecting the growing discontent with the various deficiencies and dysfunctionalities that impact the daily lives of the people. While brands have espoused understanding of their audiences as being intrinsic to the building demand and long term values, have also claimed to continuously evolve to meet their needs and desires; the direction and speed needs to change. This adaptability first of all has to really demonstrate sensitivity to their audiences and not just pay lip service to it. Secondly, it needs to be truly symbiotic as people get more aware and knowledgeable—the “I know what’s better for you” school of branding is increasingly obsolete. Never before has there been such a need for brands and the people they address to, engage with each other for real long term brand harmony and engagement. Perhaps attending a concert of Indian music might bring more illumination on how to do so effectively, than an army of so-called “strategists”.

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The Dubai debt repayment crisis. What is it? How will it play out? Posted by: Krishna Kumar in in the news on Nov 30, 2009, Tagged in: sovereign guarantee, Peru, Nakheel, loan default, financial, Dubai World, Dubai, debt repayment, crisis, Argentina

y now a lot of Internet bandwidth has been consumed by discussions about the Dubai debt repayment crisis and its possible impact. The timing of the announcement was such that immediate discussions could be kept to the minimum—the Arab world was in the midst of Eid, the United States was closed for Thanksgiving and it was one day to the weekend in the rest of the world. But given the 24 x 7 x 365 nature of today’s news and business cycles, there is only so much of discussion you can hope to keep down. So, government after government and company after company has gone on record to assure one and all that they will not be affected or that their exposure will be limited. As I write this, the Royal Bank of Scotland and HSBC are supposed to have the maximum exposure to Dubai’s debt. What exactly is the crisis? Dubai took on an unprecedented level of real estate and infrastructure development both at home and abroad to move itself from being an oil-dependent economy to become a tourism and financial services hub of the world, building edifices that out-marveled the best elsewhere. This program was channeled through government-owned companies that took on huge amounts of debt to finance the effort. This debt (USD 59 billions, which is affected by the current crisis) is by government-owned companies and are backed by sovereign guarantees of the Dubai Government. And as we will see in a minute, that is the bigger problem. With the global financial crisis (on hindsight, is the crisis over yet?) demand, and therefore the price for the high-priced infrastructure that is being built in Dubai, fell and obviously there is no longer a queue of the rich and the famous waiting to move in. To cut the long story short, two of the agencies that were fronting the effort—Dubai World and Nakheel—have called for a six month moratorium on interest payments so that they can restructure their business. The loans have not been defaulted. That is the good part. How much money is involved? The number I am working out is a pure shot in the dark. I have no experience in multi-billion dollar loans or their interest deferments. So, take these figures with huge bagsful of salt. USD 59 billions at 3 percent annual interest for six months works out to a little under a billion dollars (0.89 billions); small change in the global financial system, much less than the bail-out monies doled out to banks across the world by various governments. The impact of the announcement has been much more than the quantum of money involved. The reasons are obvious. We are talking about one of the economic hubs of the world defaulting on a loan. We are talking about an eminently rich country and its government being involved. We are talking about a country that already owns or is in the process of building up enormous real estate, infrastructure and business assets in almost every country in the globe. We are talking a bet that placed all eggs of a country in one basket possibly going awry if not wrong; of more bad news down the line and, horror of horrors, a possibility (however remote that be) on a default of a sovereign guarantee. What will happen next? The moratorium will be granted, if nothing else, for the fact that the amounts involved are too huge and there is no other choice. The debt would be restructured. The key question is what else? What if six months are not enough? What if the current disclosure is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg? What if this and more debts move to default? Then comes the question of sovereign guarantees provided to the loans by the Dubai Government. Invoking a sovereign guarantee, while not unheard of, was never in the consideration list in the context of the oil-rich Persian Gulf countries. Now, horror of horrors, what if the guarantee is also defaulted? Even that has happened in the past—in Peru in 1996 and in Argentina in 2001—and the consequences to the area and to businesses (bankers, investors, builders, service providers, etc) can be disastrous. More disastrous would be the impact on the economic psyche of a world just struggling out of a major recession. One of the key issues that will determine the level of impact will of course be whether the crisis can be contained to this one time deferment of interest payments by six months, or whether there will be a cascading effect that goes beyond the interest on 59 billion dollars for six months to other debts of Dubai World, beyond Dubai World and onto other enterprises in Dubai, to the rest of the Middle East and then on to Europe and the rest of the world. Needless to say, the resolution of the crisis and how it exactly plays out will not be based on economic decisions alone, but on geo-political factors, give and take and many games of one-upmanship and lots of backroom negotiations and deals that we will never get to hear about. The key question then, is not whether a resolution will happen, but what else will happen before there is a resolution of this crisis. 76

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10 sectors of the Indian economy that will be affected by the Dubai debt repayment crisis Posted by: Krishna Kumar in in the news on Nov 30, 2009, Tagged in: stock markets, spices exports, restructuring, remittances, real estate, manpower, infrastrucure, family income, economy, Dubai, debt repayment crisis

his is a continuation of my earlier post—The Dubai debt repayment crisis. What is it? How will it play out? This post looks specifically at how the crisis will affect the Indian economy and Indian companies.

The Government of India as well as the Reserve Bank have stated that there is nothing to worry. Major banks have followed suit, quantifying their exposure in Dubai and major real estate firms have followed suit. Does that mean that there is nothing to worry? While in a macro economic sense this may be correct, at a more on-the-ground level, the truth is far worse; there are very real reasons to worry. Let us understand the sectors that will be negatively impacted in India and this is key—IF, repeat IF the crisis becomes bigger and goes beyond Dubai World and affects the region at large. 1. Foreign inward remittances – down The gulf region is the major contributor to foreign inward remittances into India. This is not corporate income or foreign direct investment (FDI). The bulk of these inward remittances are the aggregation of monies Indians working in the region keep sending home, month after month. The last couple of years have been hard on these people, given the general economic situation. Any region-specific monetary crisis could well end up as the straw that broke the camel’s back. 2. Family incomes – down A direct result of the above foreign remittance coming down dramatically would be that the incomes of the families depending on these remittances month after month would take a huge hit. Directly affected would be tens of thousands of families, particularly in the states of Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Bihar, amongst others. 3. Specific state economies – down Given that the consumption (and investment) economy in states like Kerala is very much dependent on this regular inflow from the Gulf region, a sudden closing of the tap could have a devastating short term, if not long term impact on the economies of these states (Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar). 4. Real estate investments – down Real estate companies have been busy declaring the extent of their exposure to the Gulf markets in general and to Dubai World in particular. And that is not even half the story! In the last few years, significant investments have poured into the Indian real estate and construction sectors from investment vehicles based in the Persian Gulf. These are not necessarily investments into the real estate firms themselves, but mostly take the form of specific joint ventures for executing specific projects. This would mean that the investments are in projects currently in execution or just announced. Now, add the fact that the investments tend to come in tranches based on progress of individual projects and we have to consider the possibility of these projects going off schedule as promised funds do not come in. A large number of real estate players have been preparing for either an IPO (initial public offering) or for PIPE (private investment in public equity) or QIP (qualified institutional placement) investments. Now, if the stock markets take a long term hit, all these plans will have to be revised if not delayed. 5. Infrastructure projects – down Any impact on the real estate sector as discussed above will have its reflection on infrastructure projects in the country. In addition to that, many companies from the region, including Dubai World itself are executing several large scale infrastructure projects in the country. Any impact of the current crisis beyond the current deferment or any significant restructuring of Dubai World could impact the schedules of these projects and could throw them also out of sync. 6. Gold prices – up This is the only item on my list of ten that is likely to move upwards as a result of this crisis, and that is no good thing. Gold has been seeing a wild upward swing in its prices as investors across the world scurry for safer investment options. This crisis will only accentuate the preference for gold, driving prices up even further. Another interesting tidbit to be kept in mind is that the Gulf region is a major hub of the gold trade. How the crisis will impact gold trade itself remains to be seen. 7. Manpower placements – down Though overshadowed by manpower placements in foreign countries by the IT industry, the Gulf region is still a major market for manpower, particularly for skilled and unskilled labor. Any shake-up in the region leading to job cuts or people refusing to work in the region will significantly impact this sector. Similarly, other services exports to the region will also be significantly affected.

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8. Local consumable items exports – down Many items of local consumption are exported in large quantities to the expatriate population in the Emirates. These largely include food items and cultural items. A major change in employment levels in the region will leave their immediate impact on these exports. Now, there is a possible silver lining here that the lack of export markets could bring local prices of these items down, cooling down the local markets, which seem to be on fire as far as prices go. But then, the purchasing power may also have vanished from the markets, re-establishing status quo. 9. Spices exports – down The Emirates region is a significant market for Indian spices. Any financial shake-up in the region could adversely affect the market for these items. 10. Stock markets – down Finally, the most obvious impact—on the stock markets. Stock markets the world over are no longer isolatable from events that occur far away and which seemingly have no impact on the local businesses. The mildest tremor elsewhere can be felt in stock markets across the world, with varying amplification. The stock markets have just started to recover from one down cycle when this has happened. The impact on the day after the announcement was bad, but not disastrous. It is almost as if the markets are awaiting more clarity, which can be expected in the coming days and months. If the news in the coming days is not good, the markets could be in for another tailspin and that cannot be good for anyone, including for investments expected into sectors not directly affected by the Dubai crisis.

Multi-lingual salesforce in retail Posted by: Vivek Kumar in On the Website on Dec 01, 2009, Tagged in: sales force, sales, retial, outlet, multilingual, market

was visiting Wagah Border, Amritsar, Punjab with one of my friends. We were walking towards the actual site of retreat where they perform the flag ceremony. On the pathway before the official boundary starts, there were food outlets and small tea-shops. Lots of vendors were selling VCDs of that retreat so that people can enjoy them later and perhaps show others what actually happens on the site. In that lane of small shops, lots of people were enjoying tea and eatable items. Being the start of summer, some people were looking for cold drinks. I particularly noticed one foreign couple who were not able to make a decision in which shop they should sit. Presently, a boy wearing a cap came forward and invited them in English to have a seat, while other shopowners could not take the initiative. This guy was fluent in English and he went on to ask that couple what they would like and what choices he could offer. The couple felt comfortable because they were able to understand the guy. They hesitatingly asked if they could get canned beer, which the guy very easily produced and the couple were pretty happy about it. In Puttaparthi, Andhra Pradesh, there are lots of tailor shops just opposite to the main Ashram. Lots of foreign customers like to make Indian dresses because inside the Ashram, it is advised to wear simple dresses that are not flashy and revealing. However, because there are many visitors who don’t even know English, it becomes pretty difficult to choose a shop where they could feel comfortable about the product that would come out. The shop-owners know this situation— what they have done to achieve better customer appeal is learn foreign languages like Italian, Spanish, French and some bit of Chinese. When they notice customers approaching these shops still undecided, they welcome them in different languages. Oftentimes, customers have scarves of their country name around their necks, which helps the shopkeepers know what language they should speak. Welcoming them in their native language makes the customer feel related, and they prefer to get their clothes done from those shops. In Kodaikanal, Tamilnadu, there are lots of tea vendors. During the summer season, Kodaikanal, being a hill station, receives a lot of visitors and it is very pleasantly cold there. Enjoying a morning cup of tea or coffee gives so much joy to those visitors. Many of these vendors have learnt to speak English—at least giving the price and small words in English, which helps them cater to customers from different states and, of course, from different countries. What is my point from all these stories In the retail sector, it becomes important to have a multi-lingual salesforce if the outlet happens to receive customers from different states and more so if it receives foreign customers. Suppose there is a retail outlet in Gurgaon, Delhi, Mumbai, Bangaluru, Hyderabad, Goa and similar cities—the salesforce would be performing in a better way if they are multi-lingual and can handle customers who might not be hailing from the native city. Of course, this sales-force should have a strong hold on the regional language also, but it becomes better if they are multi-lingual and know how to handle customer who speak in English. Are there, in your opinion, some other characteristics that the salesforce in a retail outlet should possess to secure sales from leads? Have you been into any of these situations? Or have you ever noticed this kind of situation in a retail outlet? Do share your stories.

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The Institution of Engineering and Technology

International Technology and Innovation Conference was held on 3rd December 2009 at The LaLiT Ashok, Bangalore

(Pictured above, I. Vijaya Kumar (IVK) CTO of Wiproâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s IT business, opening keynote speaker at IETâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s International Technology and Innovation Conference 2009)

he Institution of Engineering and Technology held a very successful International Technology and Innovation Conference in Bangalore, India on the 3rd of December 2009. The event was targeted at IT professionals in Bangalore, the IT hub of India, and featured top speakers from the industry including representatives from Wipro, Dell, IBM, Yahoo, Erehwon Innovation Consulting among many others. The conference covered various topics around innovation such as innovation for sustainability and growth, IT as an enabler of business innovation and optimization, innovation measurement intellectual property rights, managing open innovation and case studies of innovation in mature organisations as well as start up. The conference also featured lively panel discussion on how to become drivers of innovation. IT and Technology Innovation is a hot topic especially in India being at the forefront of innovation. Over 65 delegates attended the conference, including representatives from companies such as Siemens, Infosys, TCS, Wipro and many more. This conference was chaired by Professor Sadagopan of IIIT, Bangalore. This was the second IET International Conference of the year in India, organised by the staff based in the IET India office in Bangalore. Six more International conferences will be held in India in 2010. DARE.CO.IN | EVENT | JANUARY 2010 79

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Make the most of business events Just attending an event for namesake wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t help you or your business. It is only by learning, networking and following up with people that you can add value to your time and effort. /Vimarsh Bajpai

e are living in a highly networked world. The buzz around social networking sites such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook etc is all about building contacts, interacting with peole who are either friends, relatives, colleagues, customers or simply acquaintances. When you are a new entrepreneur doing a startup, you need support both in terms of knowledge and people. This is where business events come in handy. 80

A number of organizations including non-profit, business associations, institutions, media houses, lobby groups besides government hold events from time to time on almost every sector of the economy and for all target groups such as startups, SMEs and large corporates. Some of the events are paid while others are free. No matter what the case, unless you make the most of these business events, it would be a sheer waste of time to just go there and not use it to your benefit. Here

are a few tips on how to make it worth the effort.

Know the agenda well The sheer number of events that take place every month is so high that it becomes important not to get lost in the crowd but identify the right one that would help you. Most organizers list the events on their websites well in advance. Block your seats for those you want to attend. If you are interested in attending an event that focuses only on market-

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It helps to know a Don’t make sales pitches The events are meant for learning little in advance about the and networking not for selling your products or services. It would be speakers and the attendees. You quite a turnoff if you start makmay ask the organizers to share their ing sales pitches. You could turn away some potential customers vita with you. This not only helps you by making sales pitches at these understand where they are coming events. The business events are meant to strike the first conversafrom when they speak but would tion about the business you are in, help you frame your questions the market you operate in, and exchanging thoughts on various issues. accordingly. Keep your questions ready comers are not appreciated by organizers, attendees and speakers. Besides you may end up disturbing the people at the venue. And yes, don’t blame it on traffic or parking pangs when you reach late. Be candid in acknowledging that you could not make it on time.

Make an impressive yet brief introduction Instead of hanging around alone or sitting in one dark corner of the hall, it is better to go and meet people. If you don’t know anyone, then try making ing or branding, then there is no point contact with a group. All you have to wasting your time on an event where do is make a brief introduction of your it is just one of the topics in the lost name, the business you are in and the list of agenda. city you are based. Be forceful because the first impression is quite important. Track speakers and attendee profiles But this does not mean shouting. You It helps to know a little in advance can be polite yet forceful. about the speakers and the attendees. You may ask the organizers to Exchange business cards share their vita with you. This not Exchanging business cards is not a only helps you understand where ritual but a necessity. After all you they are coming from when they don’t know which card could turn out speak but would help you frame your to be lucky for you. So be respectful questions accordingly. The profile while accepting and giving the cards. of the attendees matters a lot, given If you are eating or drinking and are that you would not want to waste not able to reach out to your cards in your time meeting people who are the pocket, convey that politely. But not even remotely connected to your do remember to give the card as soon line of business. as you get free. If you run out of cards, take the e-mail of the person and write to him/her within a week of Be punctual Try and reach the event on time. Late the meeting.

Value time. So when you are told to ask a question, don’t give a commentary or counter questions one after the other. You should have respect for other attendees who have given their time to the event. It is better to keep your questions ready well in advance. If possible, give them in writing and let the moderator decide if that should be asked. If you are looking for a detailed reply, it is better to take it offline.

Network during breaks Utilize the time that you get during tea and lunch breaks by networking with people. Remember you have not come in a party to enjoy cocktails and dinner, instead you have come with a purpose. So do move around meeting people and exchanging pleasantries. This is the time when most people are relaxed and would be interested in carrying out casual discussions.

Follow up on your network The real work starts after you are back from the event. Take some time out to sit with the cards you have collected. Then identify the ones that you think are the most relevant for you. Send them a hello e-mail just to remind them of the meeting. Again, do not send lengthy e-mails describing your products and services. If the person is interested, he/she would get back to you seeking details. R

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Celebrating Women Entrepreneurs of Tomorrow Highly talented and passionate, the ten CBFW-NEN Fellows are using entrepreneurship as a tool to change their communities, their academic institutes, and their own lives

n a room of successful people, all eyes were on ten young women, most of them just out of their teens. Not because they looked out of place; but because they were exceptional. These were the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women-Na-

tional Entrepreneurship Network Fellows, selected for demonstrating extraordinary entrepreneurial leadership on their campuses. At the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Women Mean Businessâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; conference held in Mumbai in December 2009, 350 delegates and

36 accomplished speakers discussed bottlenecks and opportunities for women entrepreneurs. But in the spotlight was this bunch of unknown young leaders. Why? Is it because people are waking up to the cost of not having women in the top rungs

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of organizations? Because they are concerned that women represent only three percent of senior positions, whether managerial, official or legislative, in our country? Because they cannot imagine putting their money in a company that lacks diversity in its core team? Women constitute half the human capital in our country, and more than half its customer base. Organizations can no longer afford to exclude women from the boardrooms – their aptitude and perspective is essential to succeed in today’s extremely competitive business environment. It is the same reason that brought the National Entrepreneurship Network and Cherie Blair Foundation for Women together to launch the CBFW-NEN Fellowship program. It was to recognize and nurture entrepreneurial leadership by bringing remarkable young women together

with extraordinary role models, fostering a peer network, and providing access to skill development workshops.

Unity in diversity The ten Fellows stood out for their diversity: Pooja is a rock star; Harini has just released a Carnatic music album. Anusha founded an IT company when she was 19; while Ritika, at 20, was running a social enterprise educating children of domestic maids. Meanwhile, Sonali not only turned around her institute’s lossmaking chalk company to step up production by 200%. What brought these girls together was their extraordinary commitment to developing entrepreneurship on their campuses, and beyond. The ten CBFW-NEN Fellows were chosen from across 500 NEN member institutes in the country. They were se-

lected for demonstrating leadership in building entrepreneurship clubs, or designing and executing key programs and activities on campus, or founding and managing ventures. As CBFW-NEN Fellows, the young women leaders were felicitated at the conference by Cherie Blair and Kiran Mazundar Shaw, and had hour-long one-on-one interactions with Ms Shaw, Ms Bedi, Stargate Capital Co-Founder Gita Patel and Mindtree founder Subroto Bagchi.

Winning against all odds It was recognition well deserved. Success didn’t come easy for any of the girls. For example, in Chennai, Divya had to overcome an environment where girls feared to speak in public and networking with strangers was frowned upon. It was her determination that gave her an opportunity to lead her E Cell.

Anusha Saxena, ICFAI Business School, Hyderabad Founded an IT company at 19. As Vice-President of her institute’s E Cell, Anusha’s strategic marketing has increased participation in its activities by 1,000%.

Bhawna Anjaly, Birla Institute of Management Technology, Delhi A founder of her institute’s E Cell, Bhawna helped spike E Cell membership from nine to 315 members, more than half the students on campus.

Divya Sornaraja, Vellamal Engineering College, Chennai Divya’s Markey savvy and operations skills helped her revived her institute’s defunct E Cell and increase membership to 300.

Harini Ramaswamy, Alagappa College of Technology, Chennai Multi-talented Harini is driving entrepreneurship activities not only at her own institute but at three more colleges in Anna University.

Neha Rambhia, IIT-Bombay, Mumbai As a leader in India’s most mature E Cells, Neha launched the “Entrepreneurship Garage” at IIT Bombay, aiming to make it a brainstorming hub for innovators and entrepreneurs.

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Niyanta Gupta, D Y Patil Institute of Technology, Pune Niyanta Gupta launched a newsletter that resulted in a tenfold increase in membership for her E Cell.

Pooja Sunder, College Of Engineering, Pune Rock-star, editor, snooker player and a chess champion, Pooja Sunder is also the force behind the newly–launched E Cell at her institute.

Ritika Arya, Jai Hind College, Mumbai Ritika Arya’s social enterprise Empower India has helped put 23 poor children to school.

Saranya B Saranya launched the institute’s first campus company, a vermi-composting unit, and is giving fellow students their first experience of working in a startup.

Sonali Gaddam, Mount Carmel College, Bangalore A turn-around artist, Sonali Gaddam took over the loss-making chalk company at her institute and in one quarter stepped up production by 200% and recorded a profit of 37%.

On the other hand at Bangalore’s Mount Carmel College, Sonali took on a job that nobody wanted: Managing a loss-making chalk company. Production was below target, customers were leaving in droves, team members lacked direction and profit was an alien word. But Sonali didn’t give up. She interviewed her key customers, responded to feedback and invested in production quality. She ultimately succeeded in turning the company around and posted healthy profits within a quarter. For Ritika, convincing poor domestic maids in her neighbourhood to send their children for education was tough. The parents either thought it was inconvenient or were doubtful of her intentions. It took three months of effort before her venture took off. Today, her school has 23 students. 86

The CBFW-NEN Fellows achievements stand starkly in a country where women business leaders are few. Even in the free-wheeling younger world of Indian startups, women leaders remain scarce: of the almost 600 startups that competed for the 2008 Tata NEN Hottest Startups Awards, only eight percent were headed by women. Admits Anusha: “For the longest time, I felt like a lone ranger championing the cause of entrepreneurship. I wondered if I was the only one who saw a huge opportunity for women in entrepreneurship.” However, her views changed when she met other Fellows and leading women entrepreneurs during the conference. “The Fellowship exposed me to other like-minded girls who were tackling similar challenges in their own institutes, and learn from them. Personal interac-

tion with successful role models like Kiran Mazumdar Shaw and Kiran Bedi inspired me,” she shares. The recognition helped too. “It has strengthened my belief in myself – both as a leader and an entrepreneur.” she says. It is experiences like these that the Fellowship program seeks to facilitate, points out Laura Parkin, Executive Director, National Entrepreneurship Network. “The overarching goal is to equip and enable new and future women entrepreneurs to capitalize on the vast opportunities of today. India can achieve its goals of economic growth and social stability only if its women leaders are recognized and empowered,” she adds. For more details on CBFW NEN fellowship program visit www.nenonline.org. To learn more on Cherie Blair Foundation for Women, visit www. cherieblairfoundation.org."

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A host of issues relating to finance and technology were the flavor of the discussion at this SME event in Bangalore.

hen finance and technology come together, it makes for an interesting concoction that can make any good business idea take wings fast. The Knowledge Forum, an exclusive SME event targeted at the IT cluster in Bangalore, saw lively discussion between the people from the SME sector and the veterans from the field of finance and technology. The event, held on December 10, witnessed an impressive lineup of panelists. This included M V Satya Prasad, Joint General Manager, HeadSEG Cluster Banking Group at ICICI Bank; A Pooventhan, SMB Business Development Head, South India for Tata Consultancy Services; Srinivas BV, Business Development Manager, Cisco; and S.Panikkassery, Director, MSME Development Institute, Bangalore. It all started with a one-to-one discussion between a select group of par-

ticipants and the experts on finance and technology. Those looking for solutions as varied as a loan to grow their business or solutions to leverage technology to their benefit came face to face to see what’s on offer. This was followed by a brief presentation by panelists and then a stimulating panel discussion. The interactive discussion saw Satya Prasad of ICICI Bank talk of the challenges facing the SMEs with regard to the access to the funds for growing their businesses. He pointed out that if a business plan was viable there was no reason why a bank should turn down the application seeking a loan. With the economy remaining on the back foot for the whole of last year, banks have been fairly cautious while extending a line of credit to small businesses. But slowly this is changing with the

economy on a rebound. The economy grew 7.9 percent in the second quarter FY2009-10, as against 6.1 percent in the last fiscal. Panikkassery talked on the various policies and programs announced by the government for the benefit of SMEs. On the technology front, TCS’ Pooventham talked at length on how low-cost solutions were now being made available to SMEs to help them leverage technology to grow business. The Software as a Service (SaaS) model is becoming popular among small businesses and can help them get a higher return on investment. Cisco’s Srinivas focused on the need to use a host of networking solutions such as video conferencing to connect at low cost. A number of SMEs are now expanding both in terms of offices and manpower, and can avail these solutions to save money and time.

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a key-maker & her enterprise Having spent three decades making duplicate keys, this woman entrepreneur from a small town in Punjab relies on her expertise and pricing strategy to keep the business going /Vivek Kumar

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himla Devi is a micro-entrepreneur, who guesses that she could be 60 years old, is in the business of making duplicate keys for the last 35 years. Based in Nabha, a town in the Patiala district of Punjab, she owns a small outlet, which is full of tools of various shapes and sizes, a variety of locks and a bag full of keys. She does not remember the year she started this business. Shimla Devi got into the key-making business after her husband died, leaving behind their two daughters and a son, who have been trained by her in making duplicate keys. She has also trained a number of family members including her brother, in-laws of her daughters and even distant relatives. Asked whether she faced competition in this business, she replies that keeping prices low helped her gain more customers. She doen’t mind reducing the prices but would not turn away any customer that comes to her. Her customers are not limited to the town of Nabha. People from nearby villages, towns, cities visit her for keys. Some government offices also avail of her services.

The business Shimla Devi makes duplicate keys, open locks whose keys have got lost, make keys for vehicles including bicycles, motorcycles, scooters, and cars. She also visits houses and shops of customers if the lock is a fixed one like door-lock or shutterlock of a shop. She charges more for onsite services. Apart from making keys, she also repairs umbrellas and sharpens knives. Looking around her shop, you will notice lots of keys—similar and of different types. For a common man, they all appear to be similar because they are yet not prepared for a particular lock and there are no grooves on them. For our convenience, we will call them dummy keys.

Shimla Devi tells DARE that there are two types of dummy keys that she purchases in bulk from places like Jalalabad, Yamunanagar, and Ambala. These are made of iron or brass. Brass-made keys have better strength and these perform better. However, some customers do not like to spend much money on old locks, and therefore, she has to use iron keys, which are cheaper in cost. The dummy keys designed for vehicles are specific for brands and models. A key that works with Hero Honda mobike won’t work with TVS or Bajaj. Similarly, keys made for cars are specific for models. So, you can find dummy keys for Alto, Santro, ZEN, and Innova, etc in her shop. The price of the keys for bikes and scooters is between Rs. 30-50. For an iron key, she would charge Rs 30 while for brass key, she would charge Rs.50.

For a key made for car, she usually charges Rs. 200-500 and the rate goes on increasing with the price of car. The dummy keys employed for cars are made of brass only. Keys for luxury cars have higher costs just because the keys are costly from the back-end manufacturers. Now, the cars do not enter the market frequently owing to its narrow and crowded state. So, the car owners often have to call her at a place where cars could be brought easily or wherever it has been standing because the key is lost. She mentions that she never refuses a customer—if the customer is not willing to pay much, she will have an iron key ready. However, she maintains that it does not happen that she is not able to provide the key for any lock. Asked as to how she makes the exact grooves and cuts in the dummy key without using any DARE.CO.IN | SOCIETY | JANUARY 2010 89

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machine, Shimla Devi says that it is all in the mind. “With so much of experience, I just decide the cuts and grooves and start working on a dummy key. As I move along, I keep matching the cuts and grooves with the print.” She refuses a customer who appears to be in too much hurry. This is due to a particular reason: ‘the customer might be a thief.’ She simply refuses if she has any doubt about this. She uses tools like cutters, pliers, hammers, bench clamp to make her job easy. She says that she can make any key be it for a lock, a vehicle, a door, or even old “gullaks (charity boxes)” of Gurudwaras and temples. She now owns a profile-cutting machine that can produce duplicate keys. The machine has a guide that moves along the profile of the original key and a cutter at the other end produces the same profile on the dummy key. So, once both sides of the key are done, a duplicate key is ready for the customer. R

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Organizations DARE.CO.IN

covered in this issue, in alphabetic order; first appearance

Al-Can Exports .................................................................................................25

IIT Kanpur .........................................................................................................31

American Airlines .............................................................................................27

Ing L&A Boschi .................................................................................................25

Anna University ................................................................................................51

Intel Capital.......................................................................................................51

Apple ................................................................................................................31

Inventus ............................................................................................................38

Battery Ventures ..............................................................................................19

Joomla ..............................................................................................................34

Bharathidasan Institute of Management ...........................................................51

LinkedIn ............................................................................................................35

Blue Host ..........................................................................................................34

Manthan Systems .............................................................................................51

Center for Science and Environment ................................................................28 Continental Warehousing .................................................................................51 CPanel ..............................................................................................................34 Credit Information Bureau (India) Limited ........................................................17 CRISIL ..............................................................................................................19

Marico ...............................................................................................................39 NDTV ................................................................................................................20 Nishith Desai Associates ..................................................................................39 Paypal ...............................................................................................................36 Philips ...............................................................................................................31

Deccan Aviation ................................................................................................38 PHPWebSite.....................................................................................................34 Delicious ...........................................................................................................35 Poly Ventures ....................................................................................................51 Delta .................................................................................................................27 Rediff Business Solutions .................................................................................34 Digg ..................................................................................................................35 Royal Bank of Scotland ....................................................................................76 Dream Host ......................................................................................................34 SITA ..................................................................................................................27 Drupal ...............................................................................................................34 StumbleUpon ....................................................................................................35 Dubai World ......................................................................................................76 Syscom .............................................................................................................19 Equifax Credit Information Services .................................................................19 Tata ...................................................................................................................32 Experian Credit Information ..............................................................................19 Tata Capital ......................................................................................................19 Facebook ..........................................................................................................35 Flickr .................................................................................................................36 Future Group ....................................................................................................39 Go Daddy .........................................................................................................34 Google ..............................................................................................................36 High Mark Credit Information Services.............................................................19

Tata Sons..........................................................................................................39 TEAM COMPUTERS........................................................................................30 The Carlyle Group ............................................................................................51 Twitter ...............................................................................................................35 United Airways ..................................................................................................27

Hotmail .............................................................................................................34

Value Budget Housing ......................................................................................38

HSBC ...............................................................................................................76

Wordpress ........................................................................................................34

ICICI Bank ........................................................................................................39

World Bank .......................................................................................................51

IDG Ventures ...................................................................................................51

Yahoo................................................................................................................34

JANUARY 2010 | INDEX | DARE.CO.IN

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People DARE.CO.IN

covered in this issue, in alphabetic order; first appearance

Anil Pandya......................................19

N.R. Narayana Murthy .....................38

Anuj Desai .......................................19

Nakheel ...........................................76

Anusha Saxena ...............................85

Neha Rambhia.................................85

Arnab Ray........................................97

Nishith Desai ...................................39

Bhawna Anjaly .................................85

Niyanta Gupta..................................86

Capt. Gopinath.................................38

Pawan Deokule................................96

Chanda Kochar ................................39

Pooja Sunder ...................................86

Cherie Blair ......................................85

Pranav Bhasin .................................97

Divya Sornaraja ...............................85

Prannoy Roy ....................................20

Gautam Jayaraman .........................97

Professor Sadagopan ......................79

Girish Narasimhan ...........................97

R. Gopalakrishnan ...........................39

Gita Patel .........................................85

Raba Contel.....................................31

Harini Ramaswamy..........................85

Rajiv Dingra .....................................96

Harish Rawat ..................................27

Ranjan Chopra ................................30

Harsh Mariwala................................39

Ritika Arya .......................................86

I. Vijaya Kumar .................................79

S.Panikkassery ................................87

Imran Hussain Meer ........................54

Saranya B ........................................86

Jerry Rao .........................................38

Satish Vijaykumar ............................96

K.V. Kamath .....................................39

Shekhar Gupta ................................38

Kanwal Rekhi...................................38

Shimla Devi .....................................89

Kiran Bedi ........................................86

Siddharth Das............................18, 19

Kiran Mazundar Shaw .....................85

Sonali Gaddam ................................86

Kishore Biyani..................................39

Srinivas BV ......................................87

Laura Parkin ....................................86

Subroto Bagchi ................................85

Lou Gerstner....................................31

Sumeet Anand .................................97

M V Satya Prasad ............................87

Udai Singh ......................................96

Moksh Juneja ..................................96

Vasu Ramanujam ............................97

Ms Bedi............................................85

Vijay Parikh ......................................25

N Ravindran.....................................25

Vikramjit Roy....................................96

DARE is not an acronym. It represents the daring spirit of the entrepreneur. The red color for the R of DARE represents the fire in the belly of the entrepreneur. You could think of the D representing the face, A representing the chest, R representing the belly and E representing the feet of the human body. Hence the red R. The entrepreneur dares to do things. (S)he dares to do things differently

SMS â&#x20AC;&#x153;DARE <your comments, questions or suggestions>â&#x20AC;? to

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Headstart

Startup Saturday Startup Saturdays continued to be held across various cities during the month of December. The holiday season did not dent the entrepreneurial spirit of its participants.

umbai had a record turnout this month largely due to the topical subject of 'Digital Marketing' being discussed there. Satish Vijaykumar of 2Ergo explained the nuances of what goes into the planning and execution of a mobile marketing campaign. Moksh Juneja discussed the 13 Myths that need to be busted while developing a digital marketing plan. His presentation was minimalist and wacky at the same time. One of his notable myth buster that drew a lot of laughs from the audience - “Using a naked picture of yourself as your Avatar can help increase friends and followers (...on facebook...)” Vikramjit Roy of Mumbai Mantra discussed on what start-ups need to do while developing a digital marketing strategy; with a keen emphasis on integrating your digital marketing strategy with other media to impact synergies. Deap Ubhi shared his insights on Starting Up. Some of them were on • How to figure out the 'need gap' in your defines market space by doing dipstick surveys. • The benefits of having a small team. • The overlaying need to understand the peculiarities of the Indian mindset when it comes to advertising in classifieds • Rigidity of strategy implementation vis-a-vis the suppleness (flexibility) of it. • The importance of knowing when to let go of an idea in order to change course. Other panelists included Rajiv Dingra of WatBlog and Pawan Deokule who is the former Digital Marketing manager of ICICI Bank. The discussions revolving around Digital Marketing and Social Media touched upon the value this medium can add to different types of businesses and even be used to sell a Mixer Grinder or Washing Machine. At the same time participants got a chance to put their queries and issues in front of the speakers and take their advice. Startup showcase in Mumbai consisted of Amit Bhartiya of Vizisense. He went on to explain in detail the technology developed by Vizisence that helps marketers not only determine the performance of various websites but also compare the popularity of them in order to decide on web media properties for interactive marketing/advertising. The December edition of Startup Saturday Kolkata, where a bunch of bright young entrepreneurs met at Globsyn Business School, listened to industry veterans who explained their experience in the world of startups, and tried to sell their own ideas or ventures to the crowd present in ‘5 minute lightning pitches’ Udai Singh of eRevMax, a software development company for the hotel industry; discussed on how his company is a game changer in the Hotel reservations segment with use of technology by developing - Rate Tiger - a Revenue Management System. As a result of his persuasions, everyone in the room ended up debating what makes a great startup company, and ended up concluding that it is not merely hard work, capital, knowledge or opportunity that make a great startup, but there is a certain ‘x-factor’ about startups that sometimes goes on to make brightest stars like Facebook or Alibaba.com. 96

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Arnab Ray from Array Consultancy Services,showcased his services that offered a more technical and formal approach to entrepreneurship than we are used to seeing in India. The experts in Dec edition of Startup Satruday Pune were - Vasu Ramanujam, Director, Entercoms and , Girish Narasimhan- cfaw. The startups that presented were CAE package maker Zeus Numerix , represented by CoFounder Basant Gupta, Browser based internet security tool maker Uniken.com; represented by Business Development head Gautam Jayaraman; and Kanhaiya Kale of Indic Transtech , a ‘community computing’ portal. All the three companies were well received by experts and audience. After quizzing Kanhaiya on basics, Vasu, who is also a part-time angel investor, rose up and said “Here, take my card. Buzz me soon. I’d like to fund you!” Gautam Jayaraman was excited about the feedback he received from the community. He said he could now position his browser-based internet security product better in the market. The startup Saturday December edition at Bangalore was organized on the theme of “Hiring and retaining people in Startups”. An interesting set of startups came and made lightening pitches in 2 minutes given to them to present their idea. The interactive session introduced companies like Interviewstreet.com which is an online interface that connects corporate professionals with students through mock interviews and mentoring sessions, rentoys.in, a toy rental company and many other interesting business ideas. The panelists, Sumeet Anand, Founder, CEO at Kreeo.com & Pranav Bhasin, Co-Founder at Lifeblob shared their experiences with hiring resources as they were building their companies. Sumeet talked about how he built a team for a company which was completely bootstraped and Pranav talked from his perspective on building a team for a company which is funded. The panelists addressed questions like: • What skills to look for in candidates when forming the core team. • How to compensate your employee. • How to protect the IP. It was interesting to listen to their experiences and the audience ensured all their questions got answered. Some key learning’s from the Bangalore panel discussions were: • Ensure you understand the career needs of the person you are hiring and work towards meeting their needs. • Hiring fresh graduates helps in the initial stages as they are enthusiastic and looking forward to learn & grow in a company. It also helps in managing the expenses when budgets are tight. But ensure hard working and talented freshers are hired and provide them enough guidance to learn and contribute. • It helps to keep the new hires under a probation period to evaluate their performance. • There is no specific benefit to have NDA or IP protection agreements with your employee until and unless it is a critical need. In fact it is better to build trust in your team and discuss the business growth and plans with them openly. It helps the team to understand the business on the whole and contribute effectively. With over 500 participants now registering for Startup Saturdays across the country the entrepreneurial community has support system like none other. DARE.CO.IN | EVENT | JANUARY 2010 97

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POPULATION ISSUES & THE OPPORTUNITIES THEY HIDE

Population issues & the opportunities they hide Customer proﬁling and rating services Business of medical oxygen 10 sectors to be affected by the Dubai crisis Status of print media in digital times

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18 alternatives to YouTube Labor reforms: the need of the hour 24 must-haves for your business website

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