Posts tagged entrepreneurship
Have breakfast … or … be breakfast!
Feb 12th
BY Y. L. R. MOORTHI
[Management Views from IIMB is an exclusive column written every two weeks by faculty members of the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore]
[This very good article was forwarded to me by one of my friends and original article is found on http://www.iimb.ernet.in/node/1820]
Who sells the largest number of cameras in India?
Your guess is likely to be Sony, Canon or Nikon. Answer is none of the above. The winner is Nokia whose main line of business in India is not cameras but cell phones.
Reason being cameras bundled with cellphones are outselling standalone cameras. Now, what prevents the cellphone from replacing the camera outright? Nothing at all. One can only hope the Sonys and Canons are taking note.
Try this. Who is the biggest in music business in India? You think it is HMV Sa-Re-Ga-Ma? Sorry. The answer is Airtel. By selling caller tunes (that play for 30 seconds) Airtel makes more than what music companies make by selling music albums (that run for hours).
Incidentally Airtel is not in music business. It is the mobile service provider with the largest subscriber base in India. That sort of competitor is difficult to detect, even more difficult to beat (by the time you have identified him he has already gone past you). But if you imagine that Nokia and Bharti (Airtel’s parent) are breathing easy you can’t be farther from truth.
"What Apple did to Sony, Sony did to Kodak, explain?" Sony defined its market as audio (music from the walkman). They never expected an IT company like Apple to encroach into their audio domain. Come to think of it, is it really surprising? Apple as a computer maker has both audio and video capabilities. So what made Sony think he won’t compete on pure audio? So also Kodak defined its business as film cameras, Sony defines its businesses as "digital."
In digital camera the two markets perfectly meshed. Kodak was torn between going digital and sacrificing money on camera film or staying with films and getting left behind in digital technology. Left undecided it lost in both. It had to. It did not ask the question "who is my competitor for tomorrow?" The same was true for IBM whose mainframe revenue prevented it from seeing the PC. The same was true of Bill Gates who declared "internet is a fad!" and then turned around to bundle the browser with windows to bury Netscape. The point is not who is today’s competitor. Today’s competitor is obvious. Tomorrow’s is not.
Hiding behind all these wars is a gem of a question – "who is my competitor?"
In 2008, who was the toughest competitor to British Airways in India? Singapore airlines? Better still, Indian airlines? Maybe, but there are better answers. There are competitors that can hurt all these airlines and others not mentioned. The answer is videoconferencing and telepresence services of HP and Cisco. Travel dropped due to recession. Senior IT executives in India and abroad were compelled by their head quarters to use videoconferencing to shrink travel budget
So much so, that the mad scramble for American visas from Indian techies was nowhere in sight in 2008. (India has a quota of something like 65,000 visas to the U.S. They were going a-begging. Blame it on recession!). So far so good. But to think that the airlines will be back in business post recession is something I would not bet on. In short term yes. In long term a resounding no. Remember, if there is one place where Newton’s law of gravity is applicable besides physics it is in electronic hardware. Between 1977 and 1991 the prices of the now dead VCR (parent of Blue-Ray disc player) crashed to one-third of its original level in India. PC’s price dropped from hundreds of thousands of rupees to tens of thousands. If this trend repeats then telepresence prices will also crash. Imagine the fate of airlines then. As it is not many are making money. Then it will surely be RIP!
India has two passions. Films and cricket. The two markets were distinctly different. So were the icons. The cricket gods were Sachin and Sehwag. The filmi gods were the Khans (Aamir Khan, Shah Rukh Khan and the other Khans who followed suit). That was, when cricket was fundamentally test cricket or at best 50 over cricket. Then came IPL and the two markets collapsed into one. IPL brought cricket down to 20 overs. Suddenly an IPL match was reduced to the length of a 3 hour movie. Cricket became film’s competitor. On the eve of IPL matches movie halls ran empty. Desperate multiplex owners requisitioned the rights for screening IPL matches at movie halls to hang on to the audience. If IPL were to become the mainstay of cricket, as it is likely to be, films have to sequence their releases so as not clash with IPL matches. As far as the audience is concerned both are what in India are called 3 hour "tamasha" (entertainment). Cricket season might push films out of the market.
Look at the products that vanished from India in the last 20 years.When did you last see a black and white movie? When did you last use a fountain pen? When did you last type on a typewriter? The answer for all the above is "I don’t remember!" For some time there was a mild substitute for the typewriter called electronic typewriter that had limited memory. Then came the computer and mowed them all. Today most technologically challenged guys like me use the computer as an upgraded typewriter. Typewriters per se are nowhere to be seen.
One last illustration. 20 years back what were Indians using to wake them up in the morning? The answer is "alarm clock." The alarm clock was a monster made of mechanical springs. It had to be physically keyed every day to keep it running. It made so much noise by way of alarm, that it woke you up and the rest of the colony. Then came quartz clocks which were sleeker. They were much more gentle though still quaintly called "alarms." What do we use today for waking up in the morning? Cellphone! An entire industry of clocks disappeared without warning thanks to cell phones. Big watch companies like Titan were the losers. You never know in which bush your competitor is hiding!
Future is scary! The boss of an IT company once said something interesting about the animal called competition. He said "Have breakfast …or…. be breakfast"! That sums it up rather neatly.
Success is not something to wait for; it’s something to work for…
A quick reflection on the India Elections and expectations from new Government !
May 19th
So the elections in India are over and we know officially that the Congress led Government is on the cards. Not a much change as such for common people but I have been pleasantly surprised by the way the common people in India have voted in favour of one party. This is something I think has not happened since a long time and is definitely a welcome change !
Although I have been away from India for a great part of last 5 years of the UPA (United Progressive Alliance) rule in India, but whenever I have been, I was probably impressed by the progress work done by them, particularly in the Delhi area where I was the most frequent visitor. The region has definitely progressed well on infrastructure front, but I think few things that the new Government needs to ponder, in my opinion are,
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Robust internal security Plan - After what happened in Mumbai, definitely the Indians are in no mood to have another episode of such terrorist mayhem. Although the previous Government in power (UPA only) had formed something called NIA (National Investigation Agency) which is a national level security agency. It is still unknown what is the structure of the NIA and what procedures & powers are given to the country’s elite force (expected to be).
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Economic reforms / development – Although the infrastructure upgrades have been planned well since the times of Vajpayee Government but this government is expected, now since they are on their own, to carry them forward with a rapid pace. The massive projects like national highways development, golden quadrilateral, river-interlinking were started during the BJP government should be taken forward with a purpose and be completed to assist the development of the country.
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IT & Telecommunications – Although India has long been pressing its position as a leader in “providing” IT Services to the world, its about time we start “consuming” these services within to strengthen the IT & Communication infrastructure in the country. Its such a shame that 3G network is introduced only few weeks ago in India and the average broadband speeds in India are ranked 115th in the world ! The Government & the IT ministry should be really focussing on how to improve the infrastructure and making the high end technology available to the public at affordable rates.
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Better civilization & public rights – Although RTI (Right to Information) has gone a long way in giving the public a right to know what is happening with respect to various public / personal issues managed within Government, I guess India is still divided over several issues such as castes systems, religion & regionalism. The Women in average Indian society still do not have equal rights as Men and this is really sad to be seen in the 21st century. The Government needs to step up and create laws that would allow equal rights to all Indians irrespective of Caste, Religion or Region. Check out my extended thoughts on this on my blog post on Protectionism & Economy.
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Promote entrepreneurship – Not only in the IT, but the entrepreneurship should be promoted across various sectors. We need innovative solutions that would resolve practical problems such as shortage of electricity, water, food etc., we need young Indians to come forward & get into entrepreneurship. Do you still remember the person who supposedly developed the petrol using tree leaves ! What happened to him and his project? And remember project Rainbow that used paper to store Terabytes of data ! What about ‘Sakshat’, the $10 laptop? We need more entrepreneurs to come forward and lead India into the new century. Read my thoughts on entrepreneurship in India & education system here.
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Reform the education system – The current education system needs reforms to allow innovation rather than follow up! We need innovative methods of education rather than reading and mugging up the books, which, in practical life are of little or no use !! Read more here..
Well, these are few thoughts I could jot down. Might be many more, but your comments are always welcome. Do leave your comment if you could spare few seconds.
Thanks & more later !
[ Image taken from here ]
An interesting debate – why do Indians do not produce entrepreneurs !
Apr 27th
In my last article on entrepreneurship I wrote about the lack of entrepreneurship and innovation in India and the root cause in the education system that was adopted over the years.
Today, on the coffee table, we had another quick debate on this and one more topic that came out was the way we Indians think ! One of my colleague referred to an interview given by Infosys Chief Mentor Mr Narayana Murthy,
Indians are really good thinkers .. but not very good doers !
By the way, the word Indian is used in the context of people “living and working” in India. This should rather not be used in the context of Indians living abroad and shining there !
Ok, coming back to the quote I wrote above, I said I could not have agreed more with Mr Murthy and I would stick to my statement here. The reason I think he is right is the fact that when I correlate it with how I (average Indian wannabe great) think and act on the massive amount of ideas I generate .. I really feel the same.
In last few months, I have been having few solid ideas in my mind and I really wanted to build some portals to drive the entrepreneurship within me.
Most notable ideas I had were to to do with Childcare in India and Educational portal across major engineering colleges.
The biggest problem I am having is availability of like minded fellow colleagues who are interested in entrepreneurship. The job I am in currently does now allow me to have these kind of colleagues around and that have the same drive as me to do different things .. 
In case you are wondering what kind of job I do in IT, I am a support consultant and in my job, the only thing that has importance is problem solving and incident management skills .. nothing to do innovation & initiatives ..
Anyways, enough of my own problems and coming back to the original topic of why Indians do not make it into entrepreneurship. The root cause I wrote in my earlier post was about the education system which just enforces you to learn what is in the book and does not encourage innovation nor independent thinking. So effectively, does not encourage you to “DO” things differently. All you end up with is to “Do what is told”.
I do not completely dismiss the thinking & doing of Indian IT companies and the very fact that India has become a giant IT outsourcing destination as well as world’s back office shows you that we Indians “Do” things fantastically well “when” the path of how to do is already defined.
The lack of core product companies, innovation houses, VC funding in India shows and supports the argument given by Mr Murthy. May be Government needs to think differently here and encourage the entrepreneurship via supporting the start ups etc.
Anyways, as usual the final thinking I would leave on you guys.
Please do leave a comment on my blog if you agree / disagree with my comments.
Cheerio
Lack of entrepreneurship & innovation in India – root cause in education system?
Feb 23rd
There is an article on Forbes.com by Sramana Mitra where she debates about the lack of innovation & entrepreneurship in Indian IT industry and also lack of any enthusiasm from the upcoming engineers to venture into innovation.
She has made few very good points on the topic and I agree on most of the points with her. In her post she mentions of the incubator programs that are run within the IITs that promote entrepreneurship within the aspiring engineers and guides them whilst they are still pursuing their studies.
One point that made me think further as a reason on lack of entrepreneurship was the fact that the increasing width between Tier 1 engineering colleges (IITs) and Tier 2 (NITs) and Tier 3 (regional universities and others) colleges. To really find out further information, I actually visited the websites of each of the IITs in the country and have a look at their incubators and obviously left me impressed with the level of work that is being carried out in there. Myself, being an Alumni of a NIT, (National Institute of Technology), considered only next to IITs in India, I could not stop myself compare the work done in IITs as against some of the top notch NITs in India and I actually found a significant difference in there !
Within none of NITs (of the ones I visited) I could find any similar program as IIT incubation programs and I really wondered what kind of innovative programs are being run in these institutes ! If this is the state of the Tier 2 engineering colleges in India then I really wonder how and where you would find entrepreneurs coming out !
In India, the IT service industry is still the most powerful in terms of job availability and obviously most of the curriculum of the Tier 2 & Tier 3 colleges is more of providing service oriented engineers rather than innovators. As correctly mentioned in one of her posts, generic requirement of an IT engineer is to earn a well-to-do job so he / she can buy a car, a house and so on .. !
On the point of innovation, I guess its more to do than just what culture you have in your degree college etc., Its more in the root of primary, high school & college education than those 4 years in the IITs or NITs or your engineering college.
Education in India, right from primary college is more of a culture of “learn-what-is-told”, rather than “learn-on-your-own-with-experiments”. Teachers teach you from pre-defined set of books all those years and you are expected to answer in the exact way as mentioned in the books, anything extra and you would lose your points in exam. The education culture does not encourage thinking, innovation, experimenting but eventually discourages the student to do so.
There is a great change required in the education system in India to make the education to promote experiments, innovation and unless this happens from ground level, I guess, there will always be a shortage of Indian scientists, innovators and entrepreneurs !
As Obama said, “The world has changed, we need to change too”. I hope India is listening.