The 80-20 Principle – Pareto’s Principle

How it came along? It was first proposed by the Italian economist Vilfred Pareto in 1906. He created a mathematical formula to describe the unequal distribution of wealth in the country. He observed that 20% of the people owned 80% of the wealth. Much later in the late 1940’s Dr. Joseph M. Juran proposed the "vital few trivial many principle". This theory basically proposes that 20 percent of things are always responsible for 80% of the results. Moreover the principle came to be known as Pareto’s principle partly because the earlier work of Dr. Juran wasn’t clear and people thought he was applying Pareto’s Economic theory in a broader aspect and partly because Pareto’s principle sounded better than Juran’s principle.

What does it mean? It means that 80 percent of all the things you achieve are because of 20 percent of all the things you’ve been doing. Further many things can be taken out of it. 20 percent of your work may be consuming 80 percent of your time. Managers spend only 20% of their time to complete 80% of their work, and 80% of a company's business comes from 20% of its customers. 80 percent of your losses could be because of 20 percent of your business. 20 percent of your stocks may be taking 80 percent of your warehouse. 80 percent of your sales may be due to 20 percent of your products. 80 percent of business growth may be due to 20 percent of your employees. One can apply this principle in any aspect of work or life.

How to use it? First we have to write down what are the main factors that are directly related to the problem or in general the question that is involved. If more than one factor is due to the same thing then count it as one single generic factor. Let us learn from a simple example.
Consider the contribution to the monthly household expense by various payments that should be considered. The major payments can be taken as:
1. House Rent- 10000
2. Electricity Bill- 500
3. Car Petrol Bill- 1000
4. Telephone Bill- 500
5. Child’s School Fees- 1000

We then chart it out and observe the contribution made by each. In the example below we observe that out of the total expenditure of Rs.13000 house rent itself amounts to Rs.10000 which is almost 77% of the total expenditure. Moreover it is just one out of the 5 factors making 20 percent of the total factors. Thus we observe that in this case also 20 percent of the factor is contributing to 80 percent of the expense.

Thus we observe that 80-20 principle can in general be applied to any day-to-day problem and with proper analysis one can prioritize his course of action for better returns and efficient functioning.

A Bass guitarist speaks on why BASS? And why play?

In the world people play the guitar for two reasons: Let us analyze (being an engineer a thorough analysis to a logical conclusion is expected of me!)

1. Well most of them do it because of all the fame you get, the rocker feeling, the admiration as you walk down and all the dumb but really hot chicks who will fall for you when you are playing on the stage even though you are doing nothing but playing power chords (if you doing that then you can even call yourself Iron Maiden! Because that’s what they do play power chords and pretend they are not yet another Gay Metal band, but honestly I like them too.) So leaving the hot chicks alone we’ll come back to them later. It is the sheer popularity that attracts people to turning into rock musicians. Most of the people I know around me fall into this category. (so does Parikrama)

2. Then comes the second kind, people who come with a sheer passion to play music and learn and explore different genres, to them rock is just another part of music. They will master the techniques and moods and then they will move onto the mother of rock music The Blues and then their ultimate aim is to play Jazz. Mind It! These people are the dedicated chaps who will never try to compromise on their Music stuff and techniques and will stick to the rules of the game.

MY IDEA: Actually, before I could turn into a guitarist I turned into a bassist. (To call a bassist a guitarist is objectionable in Bassists lexicon and outright insulting) Well I discovered the true power of Bass when I started jamming with the band for the first time as a Bassist. Bassie is generally a guy who brings the low frequency tones in the band’s music. He sets the rhythm and the harmony. Along with the drummer he decides the framework of the music that is going to come out of the band. Bass fills the whole thing and provides a sense of completeness to the song. And to be honest guitars are just fill-ins which accentuate the feeling of music. Bass is part of all the genres of music, take it from Jazz to Blues to Rock to Death Metal, all want it. Even the days of Beethoven they used the Upright Double. So my playing Bass was just a coincidence (that is another story) but I was in love with the instrument the moment I handled it. Each time while we played the moment Bass went off for a while, it took the life out of the song. So I was in love with this instrument and I knew this is what I wanted to play.

My Music Idea: Now when it was clear on what I want to play, why I wanted to play anything in first place? so I go back to the above reasons. Ok now Bass man is the guy who in a rock band would quietly stand in the corner giving out low frequency sounds. The real musicians will understand this and the importance of bassist in the band and the music on the whole, but not my mom and sister (why the hell were you standing in the corner! Why is the camera guy not even focusing you?) OK now come in the chicks we left out, for them they don’t know a shit about music or rock, they are just dumb. For them Bassist and guitarists are the same courtesy both the Bass and Guitar look similar. Oh that guy (bassist) playing the guitar so well (calling the bass a guitar may not be technically wrong but it is another racial slur on the bassist community). The dumb girls, who gives a damn though. So what’s my idea of music? Now I always wanted to become a rock star but for me music meant a way to channelize my energy into something creative. I always wanted to improve my techniques and play the songs I really loved. I was also interested in jamming, though our college schedule did not allow it! So what category I come into? Hard to draw a line. First it’s about being creative, innovative, expanding your skill sets, channelizing your energy in free time (empty mind’s devilz workshop) and exploring new genres, learning from the artists and adapting. So if you do all this and turn to the stage and perform impressing the judges with your awesome basslines while still managing to woo some chicks who mistake you for those dimwitched Guitarists and while your folks are complaining for you standing in a corner while you still enjoying the Bass kinda sums it up!

Increased Interest Rates and Inflation - Good for some, bad for many?

While Idea has been spicing up the Mobile market in India, and while the spice in the Indian Consumers food is missing courtesy increased commodity prices, the Reserve bank of India has hit out further by increasing the repo rates (the rate at which the RBI lends out money to the other banks) and the Cash Reserve ratio (CRR, the minimum amount of cash stocks the banks must maintain). The logic RBI gives is that it is going to tame the liquidity in the market by squeezing the excess cash floating in the market.

But is it what we really require? The RBI seems to have a notion that the current crisis is demand pull inflation where too much money chases too few goods. Rather the case right now is that of Cost-Pull inflation wherein the companies have to increase cost of commodities as a result of increased input costs like hike in oil prices, raw materials, basic metals and increased tax rates and import duties. This is very similar to what we have been observing off-late where the prices of inputs which go into manufacturing of these commodities have grown over the time. While the appreciating rupee saved us from the wrath last year, this fiscal the rupee has depreciated as well.

The policy of the RBI is going to lead to stagflation (high unemployment and economic slowdown).

1. The current food crisis led to government completely banning export of major food commodities and completely decreasing the tariffs on imports. This would surely hurt the revenues of the govt. and also the overall economic growth to some extent.
Moreover the RBI on increasing the rates has resulted in greater difficulty for the corporate sector to get loans from the govt. in terms of debts, moreover the markets are difficult to get the cash flowing to these corporations due to the increased alienation of the market by the investors due to inflation (as seen by the continued downward trend of the markets). This will only lead to companies shunning economic expansion and further slowing down the economic growth of the country.

2. The increased interest rates are going to hit the general public by and large. Due to increase in the repo rates by the central bank (RBI), the banks are going to increase the primary lending rates which will be generally ranging from loans for homes, automobiles and even study loans. The consumers taking loans at this time should take a loan on floating rates so that when this inflation is finally tame and the rates are finally decreased they still don’t keep paying the same as they will be now. Moreover consumers already facing the music due to increased rates and EMI’s should try to increase the duration of payment in years to bring down the EMI.

3. The biggest sector that is going to be hit by this interest rates hike is the Real Estate sector which is so susceptible to the market interest rates. As the customers are going to stay away from taking loans and buying the property the sector will generally slowdown. Moreover the big corporations are just going to wait before rolling out any expansion plans, so cutting down on infrastructure and further slowing down this sector. However because this is going to drive property prices slightly lower in most markets, it is not going to be a particularly bad idea to buy properties right now, probably on floating rates.

4. Another sector which is particularly going to suffer is Automobile sector. Already the input costs like steel have gone up, the oil prices have gone up keeping consumers away from the roads and now the increased rates will surely slow down the sales, and most of the CEO’s won’t be able to achieve their targets.

5. However as the lending rates will go up, so will the rates at which banks borrow from individuals and companies. So the particular debt-free cash rich companies are going to gain. Moreover this is generally going to make the market less attractive. Moreover as Markets are meant to give you better returns than the banks especially in terms of maintain the purchasing power of your money over the years. Moreover more and more people are leaving the markets; FII’s as well who are anticipating a general economic slowdown. However this should be seen as the best time to jump-in the stock market.

6. Moreover the cap on FDI will generally keep away the investors from investing in the country due to a nominal appreciation only, so the cap must be increased.

7. At the same time the depreciation of the rupee has to be controlled in the wake of increased international oil process. This will further help in taming the inflation. Some export oriented sectors will be affected but then the present situation demands a more balanced approach.

As the lending rates increase and the liquidity crunch prevails, will generally tend to economic slowdown. However the RBI and the govt. must try to find out better ways to balance the rising inflation and economic growth of the country.

The Gr8 Road Trip: NH2, Agra,a tryst with history!

Here goes the story:
image 2: The first image true to my belief that there should be no humans in the snaps, well this one comes very close to humans, a Langur in Sikandra, and in the backdrop a dear deer lazying and a flock of birds, i know thats a gr8 snap, i'm proud of myself.
image1: Modern to medieval, all means of transport, gr8 pic and presence of mind. at NH2

It was the 2nd of June when I was conveyed that decision on our selection (me and the other guy who made it to the last round of interview for one of the intervies was put on hold. This meant that the chances of getting in company was largely at the caprices of the company. I had assumed that my interview had gone pretty well and the selection for the company was left purely on the requirement of the company. (Which they never seemed to have for that position!) The whole next week was spent by me in the township of Kendriya Vihar in Gurgaon doing nothing but sleeping and lazying (if this word actually exists, I’m not sure) and of course eating Aloo paranthas (no one @home so had to fill up with that godforsaken stuff!). And yeah I worked on a story which has attracted the maximum traffic till date on my blog site, the gr8 day spent at McKinsey&Co. (atleast something worthwhile came out) It was Friday and my beloved brother-in-law a driving freak planned a drive down trip anywhere within 200 kms of the great New Delhi. I was naturally excited after a dumb week in the city of Gurgaon, where traveling to cash rich people means driving down to the nearest mall (cause there’s nothing actually around) and wash away a part of their hard earned earnings to these glut mall owners who seem to be wanting anything but money. (If only they read this crude definition of Gurgaon beware I don’t think I should be travelling to Gurgaon anymore! ;-(

So we finally decided we were going down to Agra. Yes the city known for Taj Mahal, which was recently reinstated in the Seven Wonders of the World courtesy the 100 billion Indian population texting! Another of my jiju’s cousin, Sonal had joined us. So we quickly logged on the internet and looked out for the Google’s map for Agra from Gurgaon. God, these Google people come out with some really innovative stuff. A second and it shows all the roads, by lanes from anywhere to everywhere. So we quickly sorted out the route. Okies instead of going to Delhi we can take a road to Faridabad via Sohna rd. and then reach Ballabhgarh and then we are on the great historic NH2 (which in olden times ran from Lahore to Dhaka via Indraprastha) which takes us straight to Agra not before touching Mathura, the birthplace of the our beloved Lord Krishna, the great flirt in his youth but who also gave us the best lessons in our religious scriptures the revered Bhagwad Gita which everyone must abide to. (Or atleast try to)
So our Road Trip was supposed to begin on Saturday, the next morning at 6!

Next morning at 6 everyone was sleeping!

It was only at around 8 that everyone gained consciousness I guess, then it was not before 10 that we left, a good 4 hours off schedule. I was naturally excited because I love Road Trips, Travelling or anything you can remotely associate with trekking. So we embarked on one helluva journey in the grey colored Maruti Zen that my jiju owns which was registered in Andhra Pradesh, being run in Haryana and now was gonna go via Delhi to Uttar Pradesh.

For me it also provided an opportunity to hone my photographic skills, which is another of my interests and I was guessing if I would be able to capture some real good stuff. I had always loved capturing nature, routine innovative and artistic stuff rather than humans in my snaps! So what? Nothing. So our trip started, and I was in possession of a relative mean machine a Sony Cybershot.
We reached Agra around 3 in the evening. On the way we halted mid way near Mathura. Had a quick lunch. Took a few snaps from the car itself. Explored the great Mathura refinery and took a few snaps (hoping these were not the last snaps of a working refinery, because the way these oil marketing companies are losing money, it may not be very long before they might close down!). We did touch the holy city of Mathura but only from the outside. Though we could see the Krishna Janmabhoomi (Lord Krishna’s birthplace) and a mosque next to it from the highway, soaked in a serene calmness and perfect example of the secularism that prevails in our country no matter what people say or think.

It was soon afterwards we touched the capital of the Great Mohammed Jallaludin Akbar. The first historic place we hit was his tomb itself, Sikandra. Took a few snaps, yup did have a look at the tomb also! It was the great Akbar’s idea to order his peers to keep his grave to the simple, the way he lived and brought about peace and brotherhood during his rule. On the way we decided let us drive back home the same night unlike what we had earlier planned to stay a day and start next day. So we quickly had to finish Agra fort and of course the Taj Mahal. Soon we reached the Agra fort, to make it clear it was not my first time in Agra. I had earlier been to all these places during my class X tour and had another helluva trip that time.

Yeah and the last time I came to Agra, one guide (it’s a major lucrative employment taken by the youth over here, who would drive you nuts with their crazy history stuff! Which could possibly be way off mark, and more importantly they will give you some raw and hard to digest spicy trivial tidbits about the city) told me that AGRA got its name from AA-GIRA meaning come and fall, because in olden times it was famous for Pick-Pocketers, so you come and your wallet falls, oh ho now I get the logic. (This fact may be untrue for above stated reasons).

Moreover if these guides drive you crazy and insane then you have a world-class place to get yourself treated in Agra the Agra Mental Hospital!

Jodha-Akbar, seen that movie twice I guess. It was so fresh in my memory that I could relate to all the stuff this time more easily.

At the Agra fort: hey! Look this is the entrance where Aishwarya Rai went through when she first came to Agra after getting married to Hrithik. Hey look this is the place where Hrithik pushed MahaManga’s son after he got nuts and killed the WAZIR! Hey look this is the place where he wooed Ash by flaunting his muskills (muscles). And yeah that’s the court house, Diwan-e-am, now I see… So we quickly went through the Agra fort. We came out by 6, had exactly half an hour before we could reach Taj Mahal before they let in the final batch of people and close for the day.

Yeah had one helluva time there. Because they don’t let in any polluting vehicles near the TajMahal, we had to take a camel cart till the entrance about a kilometer from the parking. So I could not imagine the frail looking camel buddy pushing four of us (jiju, his cousin, sis, and me) and the master around. Strange medieval ride in Modern times, surely cutting down global warming but lame and against animal rights, to be honest I’m against such practices.

No wonder we reached Taj Mahal, it was the worst I’d seen of it. It was not as beautiful as was on my previous trip, had turned blacker than ever, courtesy Ms. Mayawati, Mathura Refinery and all the brilliant people around in our country holding top positions. However it was good. I could see people involved with guides more keen on remembering that Babar was Humayun’s godforsaken father, whose great son Akbar had ruled this place and brought to India the concept of secularism and brotherhood, his son Jahangir who went against his father to woo Anarkali, and then came Shahjahan who’d spent a billion bucks constructing this magnificent building and many more, completely draining the Mughal’s budget on his beloved (citation required) and then his dim witched moron son Aurangzeb who would plan out complete capture of India and see the downfall of the Mughal empire. Between all this we were taking a lot of snaps (before TajMahal white marbles turn into Grey marbles).

I rushed towards the back side of the TajMahal to catch a glimpse of the great Yamuna River, which seemed to attract me more than Taj Mahal! It was a lovely sight; I just wondered how wonderful it must have been, when there would have been greenery all around, and the river flowing to its complete freedom, unhindered by dams and pollution. No wonder Shahjahan though a spendthrift had a great penchant for artistic and natural beauty and planned a perfect place to build a tomb for his wife. Finally we were outta that place, and headed back to Gurgaon via Delhi this time. We had a great time driving back to Gurgaon. Overall it was a memorable trip.

NOKIA SYMBIAN SYMBIOSIS

The greatest news of the week seems to be that Nokia is going to completely buy out the biggest mobile OS maker Symbian. Nokia which already held a 48 p.c. stake in the company is going to buy out the remaining 52 p.c. So what? Is it a raw deal? What does Nokia want to do with the new deal in picture? Let us have a look.

Symbian: Symbian was a company which until now designed operating systems for mobile devices. The Os was largely proprietary meaning that no one else could use it without the permission of the Symbian consortium. Yes, the Symbian consortium (Symbian Ltd.) was established on June 24 1998 as a partnership project between the big bosses of the mobile space Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola and Psion, to exploit the convergence between the PDA’s and the Mobile Phones. Soon other players joined the consortium like LG electronics, Samsung, Panasonic, and NTT DoCoMo.

What was the aim of the Symbian consortium? The Symbian consortium aimed at developing a unified closed source OS which the members could use with some modifications pertaining to the user interfaces and development of device drivers for proprietary hardware boards. The organizations joining the consortium after paying a particular license fees which would entitle them under the Eclipse License and they could use the OS.

Market: Symbian OS is the leading OS in the 'smart mobile device' market. Statistics published February 2007 showed that Symbian OS had a 67% share of the 'smart mobile device' market, with Microsoft having 13% through Windows CE and Windows Mobile and RIM having 10%. Other competitors include Palm OS, iPhone OS, Qualcomm's BREW, Google Android and SavaJe.

Current Trends and the OS (open sourcing) of OS’s (operating systems): Over the years Nokia has been the leading mobile phone manufacturer in the world. Infact every 4 out of the 10 phones sold in the world is a Nokia. But the general trend over the years in the Smartphone market has been shifting to a more ready to market device. This has led to the focus on software development for the Smartphone’s. However the developer community was not too happy. Despite the software being licensed out the developers had tough time adapting themselves to different user interfaces wherein Symbian has long served as the underpinnings for several palmtop interfaces, including Nokia's own S60, Sony Ericsson's UIQ, and NTT/DoCoMo's MOAP (Mobile Oriented Applications Platform). These varying user interfaces were a problem. This is where the developer’s started shifting to the open source movements like LiMo (Linux Mobile) and then Google came out with Android. The Symbian Foundation will unify those user interfaces, which will likely make application development easier and more consistent across a wide range of phones. This is exactly what Google wants to do with Android: unify the mobile Linux community behind a consistent interface that's compatible across a wide variety of phones and available under an open-source license. According to sources at Nokia, code will be released to the public for the first time in either the last quarter of 2008 or the first quarter of 2009. All of Symbian OS and its development tools will be made available by 2010. At this time, Nokia and its Symbian Foundation allies plans on releasing the program under the Eclipse Public License 1.0. In short, Symbian and its major interfaces are well on their way to becoming a completely open source operating system and development platform. This spells potential trouble for Linux embedded systems. Google, faced with delays in its own Linux-based Android platform, made the best of things in its response to Nokia's news. A representative for Sean Carlson, Google's manager of global communications, said, "Openness fosters innovation, benefiting consumers. We're very pleased to see other major players in the mobile industry moving in this direction."

Winners and Losers:
1. Apple can be seen sailing through the Smartphone market through innovation. It has already created a niche market for itself through technical prowess. So it is highly unlikely that its proprietary software policy will affect the sales. It can continue to innovate and attract new customers. Thus Apple is going to remain largely unaffected by this deal.
2. Symbian is been running on 60% of the mobile phones worldwide courtesy Nokia and since majority of Nokia’s phones run Symbian it’s obvious that Nokia does not want to lose out in the race and wants to be the market leader and develop Symbian to match the other upcoming competitors like android and the Limo. Moreover unifying the various platforms and open sourcing is going to make the developer community stick to Symbian Os and help in fostering innovation and better software for Nokia users. The developer community which was being wooed by the Open source Linux Mobile community and the Google’s fully open sourced Android are now going to stick to Symbian. Thus Nokia clearly emerges as the winner out of this deal. It is going to lose out on some revenues though the licensing but it is going to earn through other means like lower development costs and faster innovation.
3. Google and the Linux community which share the same ideology will be losing out due to increased competition and largely because the LiMo is still very unorganized, compared to symbian which has a dedicated developer pool working towards a concerted goal. It is still Even-Stevens for them.
4. The odd man out remains to be Microsoft and the Canadian based Research In Motion (RIM). They have for long been closed source and charging high amount of licensing fees. Microsoft’s share of 15% is sure to decline. Because unlike earlier the price to develop and time to market mobile software and Os is going to come down drastically with the opening up of Symbian and presence of other open source players like Google and LiMo. These have already brought down the cost to almost nil. So obviously companies are going to stick with Nokia-Symbian which would provide a cheaper solution and support than MS or RIM. So Microsoft Corporation clearly stands out to lose and will have to come out quickly to maintain its declining market share.

Thus Nokia-Symbian symbiotic existence and opening up is not only going to help the developers world around to innovate further without worrying about the platform and licenses, improve the time to develop and finally help bring down the prices . This will ultimately bring down the price of the mobile phones and the ultimate winner will be the end user.

An Apple a generation steps up the innovation - latest developments around 3G model and the iPhone sales issue

In 1984, there were personal computers but then Macintosh was launched and it gave us the Graphical User Interface (GUI) and revolutionized the concept of PC’s through iconic innovation! This was Generation 1; I’ll call it Epoch I.

Epoch II: Before 2004 people knew and heard digital music but then iPod came into existence and the rules of the game were changed. iPod provided us with ubiquity and the way we live the music.

Epoch III: Before 2007 people used smart cell phones, heard music on the move, even surfed the net through these gizmos, but iPhone changed the rules of the game again. It integrated everything into one device, not only made it attractive, user friendly, easy to navigate but more importantly started the beginning of a new era of innovation.

Exactly Apple has been changing the way the game is being played. By introducing innovative products in the market through focused and dedicated approach, Apple has been bringing cool products to the consumer market. And these products are not only smart but also simple for the common man to use. This mix of simplicity and smartness defines the way Apple plays the game, and with each new product marking the start of a new generation and fuelling fresh innovations in the market.

iPhone and its business: with the launch of the iPhone Apple has created a buzz in not only the music and computing industry but it marks the entry of the innovation giant in the field of telecommunications. At the launch iPhone was available in select markets of the world with full available facilities to be used. Moreover the company released the iPhones with only the AT&T network to be used for the next one year. Second, the company did not allow third party to develop software to be running on the trendy iPhone. These factors led to a lot of negative criticism and to some extent affected the sales of the new gadget.
Surprisingly before the launch of the new 3G model, a few months back Apple came out with the SDK (Software Development Kit) for the iPhone enabling many third party companies to develop and market software for the iPhone. This gave iPhone a much needed breakthrough and helped improve sales, which had slowed down after the initial craze subsided which had sent the sales sky high. Till now Apple has managed to sell about 6 million iPhones and has targets of selling 10 million by this year end. So how is Apple going to manage it? Let us check out.

Cool features of the iPhone 3G: the 3G model boasts of a GPS (Global Positioning system) which enables the phone to track its exact location. Apart from the user friendly nature of navigating through the touch screen iPhone, it also supports 3G, i.e. the third generation of mobile systems. 3G brings along with it high speed data transfer ability, thus enabling live streaming video, faster internet access etc. Moreover another striking feature is that in case of theft iPhone completely erases all the data (which could be sensitive) present in the memory.

Apple’s business model for iPhone 2G: Initially, the iPhones were being licensed through AT&T in a deal which entitled AT&T to share with Apple some of the monthly usage fees of the iPhone users. This helped make Apple profits through not only sales of the phone but also its usage. AT&T benefitted from the increased customer base, and with the number of value added services iPhone supported, it would help AT&T in a greater way.

Apple’s business model for iPhone 3G: with the release of the 3G model Apple has come out with a new set of business model, it has effectively reduced the price to around 199 USD to boost the sales in mass market by making it affordable. Industry experts feel reducing the price below this would have consequences not good for Apple in a mass market model. However the deal is still not pinching Apple that much! Why? In the new deal the iPhone is going to be released worldwide in around 70 countries with the local mobile service providers promoting it. So how is Apple gaining despite cutting down the cost of the iPhone considerably? Unlike the 2G the service providers are going to subsidize for the cost of the phone and in return they are not going to share the monthly usage fees with Apple. In this way Apple is going to lose out on some profit it could have made but it wasn’t boosting the sales so much. With the reduced cost of the iPhone and mass marketing by not only Apple but also the MSP’s the iPhone sales are going to improve and Apple is going to profit from the subsidy provided by the MSP’s. Whether it is a win-win situation for both Apple and Msp’s has to be seen. But surely Apple has adopted a strategy the major handset players like Nokia and Samsung have adopted and hopes to boost its sales.

Apple has always been the harbinger of innovation, while we wait here in India for the release of the 3G iPhone, somewhere in the silicon valley, Apple is already gearing up for Epoch IV.

Breaking News: Questions to Salman himself on DUS KA DUM in yet to be aired episode!

1. Kitne Pratishat log raat ko jungle mein jaa ke kale hiran ko marte hain?
2. Kitne pratishat log apne ex-girlfriend ko zor se thappar marte hain?
3. Kitne pratishat log reporter’s ke saath do-do haath karte hain?
4. Kitne pratishat log apni ex-girlfriend ke boyfriend ko raat mein missed calls marte hain?
And finally for 10 crores
5. Kitne pratishat log raat ko footpath pe soye logon ko permanently sula dete hain?

ROCK ON

Farhan Akhtar’s latest flick Rock On is all set to write a new chapter in Indian film-making. After totally fresh and rocking ideas of DCH (Dil Chahta Hai) and Lakshya, Rock on is supposedly going to set the ball rolling on august 29th. Yes that’s when the movie is going to hit screens worldwide.
In fact it will not be fair to call it Farhan’s movie. The movie is being directed by some Abhishek Kapoor. But the duo of Ritesh Sidhwani and Farhan is still there producing the movie. In fact Farhan is the centre of attraction of the movie playing a sort of lead role. So what is rock on all about.?
Rock On is about a group of four guys who set to pull the best Rock Band in the country but somehow don’t manage to meet with success and then part ways. Ten years down the line they cross each other once again and then anyone’s guess what’s gonna happen. So they set out again on one sole mission. Rocking!!!

In fact Farhan himself has been playing the guitar in real life (not reel) and always visualized himself as a rock star. So it’s kinda dream he’s living upto in the movie where he plays the role of the band’s vocalist. Besides there is Arjun Rampal, Luke Kenny (People watching Channel V must be knowing him), and Purab Kohli. Going by the Promos and the poster’s it looks like a pretty good makeover by especially Rampal to get the Rock star look.
The mystery still holds: who’s who in the band!! Last heard that Farhan Akhtar has actually sung five songs, composed by the gr8’s SEL ( Shankar Mahadevan- Ehsaan Noorani – Loy Mendosa) .

Ehsaan Noorani getting to rock:
Well very few people would actually know that the reason for success of the band SEL is the diversity the three bring to the music direction. While Shankar belongs to the Indian Classical music, Ehsaan brings in his Western rock finesse and Loy Mendoza is Electronica king.
Not many people know that Ehsaan started as a guitarist. Now we know where those lovely guitar licks in DCH and Lakshya came from! Moving on since this movie is Rock oriented, Ehassan will get to experiment a lot and probably give us some sweet guitar solos in the movie like the ones in DCH. So looking forward for some hard rocking and head banging stuff.
The theatrical trailer is already out and the posters have been put up in 3000 theatres across the world. The trailer has already started the buzz. I’m just waiting for the music release as of now.

TOYOTA – The Global Brand

The brighter side of the world’s most respected Automaker
“If people started living at the South Pole, we would want to open a dealership there. “
-Fujio Cho, President, Toyota Motors March 2002.
In January 2004, leading global automobile company and Japan’s no.1 automaker Toyota Motor Corporation, replaced Ford Motors as the world’s second largest automobile manufacturer. Started off as spinning and weaving company in 1918, so what exactly resulted in this historic turnaround?
Toyota’s history dates back to 1897, when Sakichi Toyoda started Toyoda Automatic Loom Works (TALW) in 1926 for manufacturing automatic looms. This concept of designing equipments to stop so that defects can be fixed immediately formed the major basis of Toyota Production system (TPS) and later became a major factor in the company’s success. In 1933 the automobile division was launched and the first passenger car was rolled out. Sakichi’s son Kiichiro Toyoda during a visit to Ford motors USA to study the US automotive Industry saw that an average US worker’s production was more than the Japanese. He realized that to compete globally the Japanese productivity had to improve.

Advent: After returning to Japan he introduced several innovative methodologies in Japanese Industry. JIT: Just in time production was adopted in assembly line system, where each unit produced only as much was required by the next in line unit thereby reducing the cost of inventories and excessive workforce. During the next few years many innovative methods were applied, but due to World War II and Japan’s direct involvement hampered the growth prospects of the company. However after the World War, the banks helped in reviving Toyota. Throughout the next decade Toyota carried out extensive expansion and sales. It setup distributors in the Middle East (Saudi Arabia), in the North America in the El Salvador and finally forayed into the US market through its subsidiary. It also setup its first overseas production in Brazil and over the next few years developed a vast network of overseas plants and R&D units.

Globalization Policy: Toyota motors policy of globalization, was internally interpreted as global localization. The company believed that by setting up plants in the company’s major market would help them cater to the customers better. Moreover they setup R&D facilities in loyal and potential markets where they hired local engineering talent. This helped them understand the requirement of the particular market better and also come out with the desired product. By early 1970’s Toyota was the no.3 automaker in the world. Its model Corolla launched in 1965, by 1974 had become the largest selling car in the world.

Losing Ground At Home: Meanwhile as Toyota was gaining ground in overseas market its sales in domestic market was on the decline courtesy Honda, Nissan etc. The company then turned to its dealer network which was already the best in the country that time. The company took initiatives to have a better communication with its dealers. It offered more incentives to increase sales and encourage them to attract more prospects for test drive. It also observed that some dealers were based close to each other and even displayed the same models. It took steps to provide them with different models for sale to reduce unnecessary price competition. Also it decided to take a strict stance if the desired targets were not met. The company also started investing heavily in advertising. These steps helped it stop its decline in the local market.

Gaining in the US and Europe: While Toyota was losing some ground on home turf it was making huge strides in offshore markets. The oil crisis in the late 70’s and early 80’s led people to move towards fuel efficient cars. Japanese automakers were always working on automobiles with increased performance and fuel efficiency. It was quickly able to capitalize on the crisis and achieve path breaking success in the US. Moreover the company had rolled out car models in almost all segments; ranging from small segment, to luxury sedans, SUV’s to mini trucks! Thus marking its presence in almost all segments of the auto market.

Breathing a fresh lease of air: In the late eighties and early 90’s a market survey showed that the average age of Toyota customer base was in the age group of 45+. Analyst felt that despite its attempt to appease the young population it wasn’t able to brand itself. This resulted in massive brand building attempts, the company embarked on a massive restructuring campaign and started a new company Virtual Venture Co (VVC), to design and sell cars that appealed to the youth. VVC adopted many unconventional sales strategies to improve the Toyota brandname among the youngsters. For a small amount they offered free test drive on the latest Toyota models. It built an $83mn amusement park, where it displayed Toyota’s vision for future models and also allowed people to design their own cars. To breathe a fresh look in the dealerships, Toyota launched on-site pizza parlors and playgrounds at the dealers place to attract the young customers and present a fresh and appeasing look to the company. The company also rolled out various models like Vitz compact, FunCargo etc. which were basically in the entry level segment. It even offered cash rebates to the buyers of these models.

Innovation: Toyota has always been involved in providing better technology and fuel efficient cars. In 2003 Toyota unveiled the new hybrid gasoline sedan Prius. It was the world’s first vehicle that could park itself. It had an electronically operated steering wheel that guided the car when reversing into parking lanes.

Business Practices: Toyota look global policy resulted in establishment of a number of offshore manufacturing plants, R&D centers and sales offices. However each unit sticks to the fundamental company’s business practices. All the units practice the principles of KAIZEN (continuous improvement), PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Action), Pokayoke (mistake Proofing), JIT and Construction of Cost Competitiveness (CCC)

Markets: For long Japan, North America and Europe had been the major markets for Toyota. The company always focused its approach to launch new and technologically advanced products in these markets. Moreover cater to the aesthetics demanded by the customers. The company launched a small car Yaris which improved the company’s brand image in the European market. The company is now looking towards the emerging markets like India and China for its expansion.

Future and Global Vision 2010: Despite the speculation that the global auto markets have saturated, Toyota still aims to become the largest automaker in the world and achieve a 15% market share. It’s optimistic that there are emerging markets like India, China, Brazil where economic activity is growing leading to rising income, moreover people moving towards owning their own cars. The carmaker wants to tap these markets.

Thus Toyota has been the most valued brand for quite some time, may be for times to come! :-)

MVNO- MOBILE VIRTUAL NETWORK OPERATORS-Business Requirement

Definition: MVNO’s are generally classified as operators which do not have their own network equipments and they may not have the required licenses to use a frequency band. They simply lease or buy network usage time from the existing network operators and resell it. They however do it by adding value services to the end consumer. Their business model seeks to make profit through these value added services.
Some of the other probable definitions explain a MVN operators as providers of mobile and voice data services without actually owning the access right to the spectrum they use. Consequently MVNO’s can be described as sub-groups of Mobile Service Operators. The radio capacity used to provide these services is obtained through commercial agreements with the licensed mobile network operators. Another definition of MVNO’s differentiates them from MSO’s in terms of technology (network components owned) by the MVNO like the Mobile Switching Centre, Home Location Register (HLR), and Intelligent Network (IN).

Players: Virgin Mobiles (UK) was the world’s first MVNO. It was actually the fastest growing Mobile operator at the time of launch adding a million customers in 19 months. MVNO’s market is basically being targeted by the already existing business houses having brand value in domains other than telecom, like ESPN mobile and Walt Disney, though the latter did not meet with much success.

Business Value Analysis: As the telecom sector grows and more number of players enter the market, we observe the gradual reduction in rates due to increased competition. The race is always on to increase the average revenue per user (ARPU). Now we understand that setting up a telecom infrastructure is an expensive process moreover in emerging markets the roll out of infrastructure should be quick enough to achieve the desired market capitalization. We observe that major big telecom players shed huge amount of money to buy licenses to operate their services.
The main aim is always to make use of 100% capacity. But in ideal case we observe that resources are vastly underutilized. Now the existing network operators are losing out of revenue due to this. This is one reason why the incumbent operators give out some portion of their allotted airtime to these MVNO’s so that Network operators can get returns on everything they have invested. Thus say they have the capacity to provide facility to 10 users at a given time but only 5 users are actually using it. So they lose out on the revenue of 5 users and the resources are underutilized. So rather than going for unutilized sources they share it with MVNO’s so that the full utilization takes place and increase the ARPU.
Important Lesson: Let us first break up a telecom market into say the urban and rural sector. We observe that that mobile penetration is pretty good in urban areas and scarce in rural areas. Now we also know that call rates are almost the same for all operators in urban areas due to heavy competition and huge customer base they target. Now to achieve a higher ARPU in urban markets they have to come out with ways to achieve higher returns. For this they have to provide value added services. We generally observe that these big telecom network operators may not have the required expertise and workforce to work in these areas and may require huge investments. This can hamper their growth in some ways as investments are high. Moreover to setup such a unit is time consuming. These network operators having already invested heavily in setting up infra and buying spectrum look to MVNO’s to solve their problem. God Sent: MVNO’s suffer from the same problem, they must be eyeing the telecom market but they may not have the required capital to buy spectrum, moreover may not be patient enough to roll out the infrastructure. Now both the network operators and virtual network operators turn to each other to solve the problem. Generally the MVNO’s are business houses which may be huge names in other sectors. They tie up with these NO and provide these Value added services. The branding may generally be done in the name of the Virtual operator because that may create a buzz and generally attract a huge following. Thus in urban markets the MVNO’s create a niche. They target specific areas and age category. Like the Virgin Mobile provides ringtone features, music sharing among peers, caller tunes etc. and attracts lot of young population. Now these value added services attract customers to these new MVNO’s. End result: the MVNO’s profit by repackaging and selling talk times brought from the Network operator. Due to the saturated market and limited resources to invest in new innovative services, to create a brand and following out it among customers, to increase ARPU, and net utilization of its resources, the Network operator shares some part of its spectrum with the MVNO. This leads to achieve higher ARPU, indirect profit by utilizing the brand value of the MVNO and thus overall increased customer base. Thus it’s a win-win situation for both.
In rural markets the penetration is not that great. Moreover there are lesser number of players in the market. The rural markets may also not demand these value added services. Thus the MVNO’s may not be interested in delving into these areas; moreover the branding may not work. The NO may also not have a very high end, large user supporting infrastructure in these places unlike they have it in urban areas where spare facility is provided to avoid problems of congestion. Thus rural markets may not be a viable option for MVNO’s.

Key Points:
The major benefit to traditional mobile operators cooperating with MVNO's is to broaden the customer base (sell additional MOU's) at a zero cost of acquisition.
It is likely that incumbent mobile operators will continue to embrace MVNO's as a means of deriving revenue to offset the enormous cost of building 3G networks.
As more MNVO's expand in the marketplace, they are likely to first target prepaid customers as a means of low cost market entry themselves.
Most regulating bodies are in favor of MVNO's as a means of encouraging competition, which would ultimately lead to greater choice and lower prices.
With the advent of the MVNO, many incumbent mobile operators will evaluate the opportunity to offer supplementary MVNO services of their own. To do so, exiting mobile operators will use their established branding, service knowledge, and supplier relationships to complete against independent MVNO's.
In the case of Tata Teleservices and Virgin Mobile we see that Tata Teleservices is not a big name atleast compared to bigger players like Bharti Airtel and Vodafone so it has tied up with Virgin /mobile to promote Its own services by using Virgin’s Global strategy, brandname, and fresh value added services

ISSUES:
These may be regulatory, governmental etc.
In some countries like India where FDI in Telecom sector is limited, MVNO’s have to be a joint venture, mostly with a national network operator. Moreover the tax policy has to be reduced so that the MVNO’s can actually make significant profit to exist in the market and to companies to see it as an economic viable option.
The introduction of MVNO’s is resisted by incumbent operators in some countries which have a monopoly, or which have plans of introducing their own MVNO’s because of the existence of strong brand name, customer base, time and revenues to invest in future value added services that the customers will receive.
Moreover MVNO’s setup will be a problem in areas where mobile penetration is less and still there is scope for existing companies to increase their customer base by reaching out to these people rather than trying to pull customers from other mobile service providers by luring them through value added services. Countries like India and China are examples.
There are multitudes of other things which are associated with MVNO’s like regulatory issues etc.

GURGAON Vs NOIDA

A few days back I was in Gurgaon. I was very impressed with the straight roads and carefully planned buildings along these roads. Being from a city like Hyderabad where buildings seem to come up almost anywhere and the roads are as curvaceous as the African bananas. Though one’s got to accept that Hyderabad wasn’t built in a day! Gurgaon sets the example for a modern day planned city! well is it? Not exactly, told my brother-in-law and why? Let us analyze why that’s not the case.
When Gurgaon was becoming a satellite town next to ever expanding national capital New Delhi, the Haryana Government was rushing into selling the land in Gurgaon to these big builders like DLF, Vatika, UNITECH etc. In fact DLF was the biggest buyer. These builders were responsible for setting up the required infrastructures in the satellite town. Each one now turned to it’s piece of land and turned it into a township with sky reaching buildings for accommodation and then these corporate offices. The construction and development work was completely outsourced to these big builders. In fact the entire piece of land was given away to these builders and very meager part was left for the government. Now here is where the problem actually took off. The builders developed their part of the township leading to unbalanced development in the whole city. What happened now was that in spite of the development within the township, there had to means to take the sewage out of each township and channelize it to the proper place. Now the builders had limited accessibility to the land outside their allotted township. Moreover this was the problem with almost all of them. They did not address this problem leading to large amount of pollution and environmental hazards. Next the Government had to buy back land from these big builders to actually re-plan the entire sewer system, drinking water supply, roads, etc. thus the government’s hasty decision led to a very unbalanced growth of the city where each developer developed only his own township and gave a damn about the impact on surrounding areas and environmental and architectural problems.

New Okhla Industrial Development Area right that’s NOIDA; while Haryana government was trying to gain maximum mileage by making it’s full use of being a satellite to Delhi, UP government was losing no ground to do the same. Only thing that made the difference is that it took the land allotment plan for the entire township under it’s control. Planning the passage for basic amenities like drinking water and at the same time passage of sewer and waste out of the city. The government allotted the lands in phases and led to rapid development by careful planning unlike Gurgaon where each builder developed his piece of land and then hung up.
So one could see that NOIDA is a more carefully planned city than Gurgaon.