Friday, December 9, 2011

Business in the time of Recession

Business in the time of Recession (as in the novel name "Love in the time of Cholera" :) - so much for inspiration)

IT is an enabler not a business in itself – it enables other businesses to thrive – there is a good and a bad part to it. Bad part is once the actual businesses shut down this one also dies – sad :( . Good part is since it is a tool it will always be in use as long as someone capable enough knows how to use it. Meaning recession or no recession – businesses will always be there so as long as IT blends itself to newer roles it will survive. (Tools never become useless). For a company working in IT – all we have to do is stay watchful and be open to options – work will always be there.

So lets think of industries which will do good also during recession plus companies which will rise during recession. Once we start working for these type of industries we will stay in business infact if we hit on the growing ones we will do good too. Lets list the obvious ones -


  1. Education sector – Recession or no recession colleges and schools will continue to run and in turn IT comapnies catering to their needs will be in business. Out of this the ones "selling" specialized courses might get hit like MBA colleges but basic ones – Engg ones will always be there. No parent would discontinue a child's education. We have to stretch this sector and look for all types of education 'places' – and attack aggressively.

  2. Food and Beverages industry – Lets not include entire hospitiality sector – hotels will be badly hit and so will be the high end restaurants. Normal ones will survive.

  3. Co-operative societies – like the ones who procure from weavers, jwellerers , farmers, etc and sell – they will cut down profit but since they cater to basic needs at affordable costs they will catch up – so will survive.

  4. Umemployment will hit health of people – there will be more hospitalization – insurance companies will be badly hit but hospitals will survive. Might cut cost but will stay in business for good.

  5. Government sponsored programs will do good (money is there) but this is quiet a big area – big players will be killing each other to get a pie – drop .


I can list down more but no point – optimization is the key ...that includes optimization of my grey cell usage too :) . So lets analyze more on point 1,2,3 and 4 – infact 4 is a little far fetched so 1,2 and 3 with 50 %, 30 % and 20 % focus respectively.


Education sector

  1. Play schools – with job losses parents will have enough time to take care of kids so this is not a good area.

  2. Elementary schools – these will be in business for sure. So we need to identify schools and try not only servicing their needs but also if we can come up with innovative products which might help schools to save cost and add value by using IT it will be great. Again we need not do the thinking, there are enough people in the system doing it – we just need to reach out to schools - they will be interested. Everyone likes a smart thing which costs less (it gives them double kick – one is they save money second is it makes them feel smarter ).

  1. E-Learning companies – they are quite successful and will continue to be so targeting them is a must.

  2. Universities – Too can be tried.


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Another industry I missed – Social media apps and games. Considering the fact that most people would be laid off – what best thing left for people to do than engage in social media and play games . Hard core games are not for all but social media app type games are the best. Infact games or apps like "What job is best suited for you" types will be very successful.


The ageless industry ofcourse which we wont work for (on ethical grounds) will be always hot and successful – sex industry. Post last recession a survey found that sex among couples increased a lot during recession – what else costs nothing and is entertaining :).


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Continuing with the earlier analysis :

Next ones are F&B and Co-operative society type companies. Again here too a little research and targeted campaigning will help. We would have to list down small and mid sized ones and then approach them.

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Investing in an instance of a social phenomenon

Social fad or social phase or phenomenon is a thing which is never constant – it's a thing which changes over time. Take any manifestation of this – say fashion trends – they change. What remains constant though are the fundamental needs – the actual needs to which the social fad caters to. In case of fashion the actual need is wearing clothes, that never changes – being nude will never be in fashion :).

Like fashion another social phenomenon is Facebook – a tool which enables people to connect to each other, share personal moments, make friends and do a host of other social activities. These activities are what this fad caters to – these are activities which humans have been doing since long. (Be it festivals, social events, religious gatherings, parties ). Some years back it was Orkut now it is Facebook – in future something else might come up.

Why I am saying all this ?

The point I am making is that these fads are never constant so if you are thinking of investing your money in companies which just happens to be doing good 'at the moment' – be alert. Never invest with a long term perspective because fundamentally they will go out of trend and you might lose money if you do not exit on time.

Once people try the fad for some time they would get bored and would move on to the next thing that comes closest to giving the real feeling. In case of social media - people would look for some other way which can simulate social interactions in a more realistic way. For example say I develop a virtual kissing app – where anyone can kiss anyone else of his/her choice and get a close to real feeling. Initially it will be quite a hit – people would go crazy but after using for sometime they would realize that this pseudo kissing is not the actual thing – they will start loosing interest and if I have not done enough innovation on my product, might gradually be out of business. All those who would have invested in my company would lose too.

So never make long term investment on products which cater to an INSTANCE of a phenomenon.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Attrition - What can be done to reduce it ?


What does it take to motivate and inspire people to give in their best effort at office and also make them satisfied enough to continue working ?


The usual methods like training, reward programs, nice salary (there is no limit to salary that will make people happy), career growth opportunities etc etc are being tried across all companies. Still if you look at the attrition rate it is roughly 11% for all the big companies. So in addition to these above benefits and steps something else needs to be done as well, something more fundamental in handling human mind and it's thought process.


Lets go to our local markets, local in the sense the actual old locality where most of us would have spent our childhood days. Have a look around there are sweet shops, garment shops, toy shops and others – the thing that you will find striking about these places is the faces that are on the other side of the shop, inside the shop. They would be the same guys you would have seen when you were a kid – so many other new shops catering to the same needs have come up but these people have not moved out – Why ? Job opportunity is there still why haven't they moved out ?

Is it that these people are less ambitious ? Or they lacked the smartness to figure out that if they switch job they can earn more ? Or did the owner do something different which made these people stick around ? Or did they sign any bonds ?


I would suggest take a break now, think over it and better still have a walk around the market and talk to these guys and hear what they have to say ? (I haven't talked to them either - I just love to observe and draw inference :-) – your discussions and feedback can validate what I am proposing here. One advice - do talk to the old owners as well in addition to the employees in order to get a well rounded idea.


The definition of loyalty has evolved over time – the meaning and significance of the term for a 50 year old and a 20 year old is not the same anymore. Part of the reason for this change is due to awareness and spread of knowledge and information, information which earlier was restricted to only a few. As society grows certain characteristics are idolized at certain times and with time they fade out and newer ones take their place. I am not saying loyalty in the conventional sense is passe and no one appreciates it but what I am saying is it does not hold so much a significance as it used to.


Self confidence as a trait has evolved as well. Earlier self confidence was there too but people had a imaginary ceiling and boundary to it. If you ask any of the older employees in the shops about the business side of things like how much profit does the entity make, where from are the raw materials procured, primarily who all are the customers, potential areas where we can find new customers etc – some would not even have answer to any one of the questions (even after working for 20 years) and some who do know might never try to venture out on their own. The obvious answer they would give for not trying out on their own would be that they are loyal – could be true in most cases but not all. Some would be there who deep down would have a desire to try this out but did not because they were lacking in self confidence – were not sure if they could have done something on their own leaving a nice stable job.


So spread of knowledge has increased self confidence and changed the meaning of loyalty. Now you would find people to be equally loyal but just that the moment you try to use the older methods of motivation (with the inherent assumption to fool him/her) that person would leave or start planning to leave. These days people are too sceptical of management and have an inherent sense of distrust and tend to always think that they are being exploited, so in such a panic stricken state they tend to maximize their own earnings – so who so ever pays more they tend to leave. Of course not all leave due to this – there could be other reasons as well but I will be writing about this category only.


Finally coming to the question with which we started why people leave ? The reason I see is lack of trust of the employee on the employer. If this is taken care of then people will tend to stay more.

The face of the company for an employee is the manager she reports to, the things which she reads about the top management and the brand value that the company has created for itself. If these three groups genuinely focus on building trust and follow up their claims by action as well then it ties the employee to the company in a stronger way. If I segregate these three in terms of priority they would be manager, company brand and stuff about top management in descending order. So the most important factor is the manager of the employee. If she distrusts this guy then she will not stay longer no matter what is given and the reverse is true as well.


Of course every manager has a manager of his own and as we keep going up it finally ends with the CEO, so it is easy to say that if this person is trustworthy then everyone else will follow suit. That is correct to a large extent but then sometimes this chain is broken when a wrong person enters – he will disrupt the process. Very vital is when you hire ensure that this one quality called integrity is present in the individual.


What is integrity and how does one build trust ? Will cover in my next blog.




Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Job Creation and wealth distribution


This article describes a business plan which would help spread knowledge among village people, help them earn their livelihood without having to migrate to cities plus help bridge the gap - be it money or knowledge or access to govt facilities. Ten years back this might not have been possible but with the advancement that science and technology has made I think this can be done now.


At present I am not in a position to involve myself directly in this – but the reason behind sharing this idea is that I feel there would be someone passionate enough to spend time and money in this (if they like the idea ofcourse).



At present setting up a remote call center in a village is very much feasible. A lot of small banks, micro finance institutions and major banks who have branches in these areas would need call center services. These services if provided by a local person would have a better and greater usefulness to the end customers. Imagine how much trouble a rickshaw puller faces when he tries calling a service provider's call center (if at all he calls). The reluctance to call is also because of the language barrier – only speaking in Oriya does not bring about the comfort factor – speaking in the exact flavor that is unique to that locality helps.

Another advantage of setting up local call centers is that it will stem the flow or migration of village people from village to city. Since the type of job they do in cities is mostly menial labor and get very less paid – this way they can earn the same or more by staying in their own place.


Advantage 3 : This will provide the base for spreading computer awareness in our villages. Plus since the network connectivity and PCs will be set up – some can be used to set up govt information centers.

The same place can double up as a call center and an information center.


Advantage 4: Since to answer queries people would need to be educated on the product and service details – a direct knowledge awareness would spread among village people.


How to do it ?


People : We will start with all the people who have a minimum qualification of clearing their 10th exam. Preference should be given more to girls because they will not be leaving the jobs to go to a different place plus they would ensure that the place is maintained properly. But having said this there is no reason why guys should not be recruited – anyone showing the above traits is a probable candidate.


Infrastructure : Initially we would reach to all the big companies, like Infosys,TCS etc or any IT company to sell us their old machines. Since it is of not much use to them we can procure it at a less price. For internet we might need to set up dish type antennas.


Customers :We need to approach all the banks, co-operative societies, any business house that wants to sell services or products in the villages. If nothing we can approach the state or central government to outsource some of their work to these call centers.


The logic is that this business will work in a similar way as micro finance works. We will set up a center and once it starts breaking even we would leave the management to the local guys and move on to set up another one. Only catch is that they have to contribute a certain percent to the parent body – otherwise what would fuel expansion.

Making the world flatter

Since as part of our daily work we have to communicate with clients, in US or UK mostly, we come across a situation where our people face problem in understanding foreign accent and the same would be true for the client as well. I was thinking if we can build a product which can convert American accent to Indian accent in real time conversation. It's like the speech to text converter (ofcourse a lot more complicated than that)– initially all words need to be pre-recorded in pairs, American version and Indian version. Then once it receives a word it translates it into the other format. The toughest part is getting this thing done in real time conversation but once such a product is built it will be of immense use to IT industry at large.


No one would need to bother about hiring accent neutralization trainers or to train people in handling calls, just someone needs to talk in plain natural accent and the tool takes care of the rest. BPO industry would also benefit a lot.


Possible uses could be :


Language independence – imagine this feature is launched in India for all languages. A marathi can talk to a Punjabi or a Gujrati can talk to a Oriya without learning each other's language. They just need to talk in the language they are comfortable in and the application takes care of the rest.


Worldwide this will connect countries like never before – world will become flat in the truest sense. A vendor in Punjabibagh, who does not know how to talk in English can pick the phone and directly talk to a guy in US and sell his product. All he has to do is select Hindi-US as an option. Or for that matter he can do that with any country. The list is long :-) .


Seamless communication will happen in the truest sense and it will make common man focus more on business and less on communication related things.