October-decemBER 2015 | VOLUME VII | ISSUE IV
Dear junctionites, We are well into the last quarter of the financial year, and like any other corporate entity, the time has already begun to introspect and reflect on what went right and what went wrong during the year, what could have been done differently and what could have been done better. As part of this exercise, we discussed this threadbare at the Strategy meet in December in Dubai. To provide a structure and to guide our deliberations, we took advantage of “Your Strategy Needs a Strategy”, published by the Harvard Business Review Press. We concluded that while mjunction had followed a Visionary strategy while it was just starting out, most of its mature businesses are now following an Adaptive strategy. Quoting from the book: “Adaptive firms continuously vary how they do business by generating novel options, selecting the most promising, which they then scale up and exploit before repeating the cycle.” The book itself quotes Rupert Murdoch as saying that: “The world is changing very fast. Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow.” This struck the right chord with all of us. mjunction has always stood for agility, never resting on its laurels, inventing and re-inventing itself at every step. Without officially having a name, it has always really followed the Adaptive strategy after the initial Visionary stage. In fact, our new businesses such as tea procurement and ocean vessel chartering are following the Visionary strategy methodology. It would be pertinent to mention here that the Classical Strategy, which involves a great deal of research and drawing out of long-term plans, is the more popular and widely accepted and followed strategy. However, I believe that for mjunction, which operates in an ever dynamic and changing marketplace, drawing up a long-term plan is
From the MD impractical and difficult, and therefore it cannot bank on the Classical Strategy to see it through. Being in the business of solving problems, therefore, mjunction has to necessarily opt for customised and therefore different strategies for each solution. An Adaptive Strategy would entail speaking to the customer, understanding his needs/ problems and ideating a solution, implementing it and then scaling it up. The only constraints that we have in our kind of business are the ones that we have created for ourselves – in terms of geographies, or marketplaces, our clients, our growth rate or even the lines of business. So if we eliminate these constraints from our minds and think beyond our given charter, only sky is the limit for a company such as ours. I would urge all of you to break out of these constraints and see the pace at which we can grow.
mjunction has been a start-up not too long ago, and one which has had technology as its facilitator at all times. This is also the age of digital technology start-ups which are making it big fast. That is why when we got to join hands with Nasscom 10,000 Startups to encourage and foster technology entrepreneurship in the country, we welcomed and embraced the opportunity. mjunction has its own Incubation Cell which regularly explores new ideas and opportunities for business, and I hope we will be able to add some value to the companies who will be just starting out. The first company is already on board, a Kolkata-based company engaged in predictive analytics in the retail space. I hope this will be the beginning of a new chapter in mjunction’s journey. The Union Budget is also coming up, and hopefully will usher in positive news for not only the B2C but also the B2B e-commerce space where mjunction exists. I welcome the new government’s decision to adopt the auction route in selling of natural resources, whether telecom spectrum, coal blocks or limestone quarries. However, though the government has decided to sell these resources in a transparent manner, it has unfortunately chosen an opaque process to find someone to do it for them. Rather than going through a laid down tender process to find the best service provider, they have appointed a service provider through nomination. Unfortunately this system overrides the natural selection of the best suited to do the job and the most efficient, which is what the public and the nation needs and deserves. Regards,
WHAT’S INSIDE mjunction holds Strategy Meet...2 | MD on the CEO Magazine cover...3 | MD interview on CFO Insights...4 | MD addresse IIM Calcutta students...5 | mjunction holds 9th Indian Coal Markets Conference...6 | mjunction aids WBSEDCL in online power purchase...7 | Knowledge sharing session...8 | Client Speak...9 | Junctionites run the marathon...10 | Know Your Junctionite...11 | mjunction organise maiden golf tournament...12 | Gallery...13 | mjunction observes TVW 4...14 | Quiz Corner...15 | mj wins award for TVW 3...16