The year that has been!

In 4 days from now; we are bidding goodbye to year 2009 and to the decade.

The past year has been full of happenings; year started with Satyam scandal; where probably most big scandal of India Inc has reported. This followed by quick action by government and all ended good with TechMahindra taking over. But it has created bigger impact.

This year also saw series of steps from governments all over the world to arrest the recession impact. It is quite clear that, this kind of stimulus packages helped world economy to revive itself towards end of the year. The tax payer’s money was used to revive companies and at end it made a lot of sense. Though towards the year end, Dubai world scared with the recession danger, but it saw some quick action from government.

This year also means bankruptcy of GM, Chrysler, and few other crown jewels of the industries once upon a time. There was strict cost cutting measures all over across industries; which led to hiring freeze and cut on salary and bonus. I guess, there are some companies which quickly understood the sentiments associated with this kind of cost cutting and took action to prevent it turning in to negative impact, some fail to understand which saw sudden jump in attrition.

From political front; general elections in India gave a more stable government and there was a change in US political scenario as well. Which, I would believe should lead to better ties between two countries leading in to more streamlined business relationship.

From personal front, there has been a change as well. And this is an extremely good change for me and family. Looks like it was much needed change and happened at right time.

Wishing you all a happy new year!

Evolution of Social Networking Business

One of the recent trends; which is very popular and money earning, is social networking business. When the concept came in to action first, it was kind of rewriting the Internet business book where a whole new market was developed.

When the concept started, it was used among friends/college kids to just be in touch and share some pictures/videos and let others comment on that. But, soon the business side of this concept came out. Now all social networking sites have evolved as major business networking sites. This allowed social networking to evolve as a business model and soon all these networking companies started making money by building revenue models around it.

For example, if I have a business and wanted to sell something, now I need not to have a full fledged website; I can just create Facebook/Orkut/Some other social networking page, where by subscribing to different groups I can make my business really popular. I can come up with different promotions, webcasts, and whitepapers there by really diverting the traffic to my business/social site.

This is something new concept.

You can do much more than just getting connected using professional networking sites like LinkedIn. It allows you to subscribe to user groups of your interest and thus participate in the discussion, or you yourself can initiate the discussion and allow others to comment on this. Personally speaking I got a job offer from LinkedIn; which got materialized eventually. These networking sites give you such a powerful media to express yourself.

It is quite interesting as how the money is getting generated in this business; for example there are three revenue models for LinkedIn.
1)Subscription: There are few services; which are still needs subscription, like to find out who really accessed your site. Individuals like you & me doesn’t need this. But, it comes real handy for business to know who accessed their site as they might be their potential customers. Thus this subscription helps.
2)Advertisement: They sell ads to different business and thereby making money
3)Selling Services as SaaS (Software as a Services): LinkedIn sells the services as software to companies to allow them to create site and allow employees to be part of it. This gives companies to establish the platform for employees to share ideas and be connected. Sometimes companied will form Alumni sites which might help them to attract old employees back.

One thing for sure, these networking sites have changed how we spend time on Internet now days.

Change in habits and ‘Hamara Bajaj!”

I concisely made a decision when we shifted to Chandigarh that we will not go for landline phone, which was otherwise would have been first thing after shift. I settled with a cell phone connection. I started thinking about shift in mindset which is occurring in recent times.

For example, hardcover suite-cases have gone now, you don’t see them in airports and railway stations anymore. MTV is not craze now since there are iPods, Video Players, cell phone is a recent phenomenon. So is T-20 cricket. We used to have so many quiz shows in TV when we were kids, but now more of reality shows. It was only (Dancing, ‘Rukawat Ke liye Khed Hai’) Doordarshan and now we have set of cable channels to choose from.

But, the transformation of scooter space is something what captured me! And the news I read about Bajaj fueled it further.

Slowly, Scoters (Gear Scooters, which we used to find when we were kids, not the gearless ones) are disappearing from Indian roads. The largest scooter manufacturer, Bajaj Auto Ltd, has announced last week that they would stop manufacturing scooters completely and focus entirely to build bikes. This is, perhaps, end to a habit and culture of ‘Hamara Bajaj Pride’; where our parent’s generation used to display.

From business point of view, the transformation of Bajaj Auto is incredible; CEO Rajiv Bajaj understood the change in habits of Indian consumer and started doing the transformation 4-5 years back. And it really paid off for Bajaj. Now majority of the business comes from bikes and scoter business is very low. Their earlier competitors (Read LML) are no more in the picture; who failed to read this change. This needs a lot of vision and understanding of consumer market. This kind of business strategy was criticized when it was planned and Bajaj still went head with his plan and proved all his critics wrong.

But, this is what the business strategy is all about, thinking ahead of the competition and time!

Outsider, Marathi, Mumbai, Sachin Tendulkar, English and India

Last month we have seen some incidents and media action/reactions where the issue was raised outsider and Maharashtrian. Even Sachin Tendulkar was questioned about he putting India ahead of Maharashtra.

I would like to see this in a different way. I am not recommending this way or that, but my fundamental question is, can we have that narrow mind? I have relocated myself to different countries, different states, where I have been given a warm welcome. I never felt that I am an outsider anywhere. Given this kind of experience it is hard to believe for me that someone asks for out-of-state people to go back or start talking in local language. I remember reading an article where Amitabh Bachchan was asked to talk in Marathi, the language which he can’t talk.

Can you force someone to use one particular language? Or imagine a situation where Bangalore asks all outsiders to leave the state if you are not local?

I really admire Sachin for his cricketing abilities, now I have started respecting him even more. Because of the fact that he respects India more and he is not shy about putting this across. This is the true Indian spirit and it would be a great motivation for all of us to really think beyond these state boundaries and start thinking like one united country.

I not denying the fact that local languages are important and we need to respect it. But, can a local language bring me enormous amount of opportunity English can bring? We are in a global economy now where India’s advantage has been English talking abilities, given this can we afford our kids to miss the global opportunity English brings up? Why don’t we allow our kids to explore the world through English? It’s vastness, it’s ability to bring good literature, it’s ability to bring best knowledge, it’s ability to provide you the communication channel with rest of the world?

As Chetan Bhagat puts it, local language is your mother and other (read English) is like your wife and it is possible to love both of them at the same time.
Time for all our leaders to understand this global mindset, this helps creating more jobs, not by asking reservation based on state.