Career

Career is like a stock market.

Most of the people do things which everyone does. When the stock market has crashed no one invests although decades of history shows that stock market follows a cyclical pattern. Similarly most of the people choose career path that everyone chooses, like at one point of time software was popular, at other times corporate finance, investment banking is hot now, venture capitalism/private equity is coming strong and but success comes to those who get into the race early and quit before the race becomes too crowded. A classic example might be of venture capitalists who hunt for the right idea invest in it and quit just before it is ripe, maximizing the profits. Somewhat similar to what Warren Buffet would do, invest in a stock when stock market is low and no one buys and sell it when everyone is buying or the stock market is hot.

Most of us would say how would they know when is the bottom and when is the peak. Or in terms of Career, what will be hot next ? Well it boils down to how much prepared are you, do you know the GAME that you are playing. The more you understand the better decision it would be. Understanding the pattern and that would be what is termed as vision. Or else breaking away from the pattern creating your own pattern.

As with stock market, Career would also have its own risk. Again no gain without pain. Risk is the name of the game. And for me least risker would be to start your own company. Company that does that no one else or even if someone does create market that the other does not have. Its like cars, in America in the 50's there were all big cars, and then comes the Volkswagen which created a market a market that no one has catered to before. It does not have to be big, it can be anything, as small as cap of a bottle but it has to be unique and it should have value.

When I think myself of what can be unique and of value. The first thing comes to my mind is washing dryer. There are some washing dryer in the market but probably it is not marketed well or too expensive or not reachable. A washing machine price in India ranges from 5000 Rs to may be 1 lakh rupee. A washing dryer is much simpler than a washing machine. You don't have to spin dry, you don't have to tumble wash, you don't have to add detergent, you don't have to fill and drain water. Nothing but to blow a hot air and rotate the drum. So if a washing machine can cost 5000Rs a washing dryer would cost no more than 3000Rs, at it strip down version. And the market, all of India. No one wants to take the pain to hand dry clothes on a rainy day, wait for a day before you can use it. It would be a revolution in Indian market. Market would be huge but they key would be to enter early and leave early.

Again everyone knows this and everyone (most) wants to start a company. In last two weeks I talked to two of the directors (incidentally both were marketing directors) in my company and I asked them what would they want to do if given a chance (they can do anything that they like). Both of them answered that they would like to start their own company. We all know that starting a company would be "THE CAREER", everyone loves his brainchild, cares for it more than anyone else does and enjoys being with it, so why not start a company.

It boils down to WHATs, IFs and BUTs, what if the company does not start, what if I dont get the finance, what is the market size etc etc, at times some of the data can be gathered easily at other times help would be needed and best approach is to look for people, people with different experience, experience in finance, experience in starting a company, experience in marketing, experience in market research etc etc etc and then draw upon their experience. But how to find so many people with different traits :) I would say MBA

Do an MBA and it would provide a market, you need to find the right product, the right person, who can help you. .......I guess MBA is something that everyone would need to do after every 10 years or may be 5 years. Because you will need newer set of people newer set of experience.

Best Known Method (BKM)

I used to make tea everyday, Indian tea- with ingredients as milk, sugar, tea leaves and water. But everyday it used to taste different, sometimes I used to like it and at other times not. Probably I used to add more or less of one of the ingredients or probably used to heat treat inconsistently. Whatever, but the phenomena of the good and the bad tea went on for eons, with me making no efforts to pleasure my taste buds. But now if I think, a simple BKM (Best Known Method) would have been nothing but best.

So what is BKM, it is simple, to make tea with gauge-d recipe and keep changing until I get the right one. Make a note of the recipe and everyday use the same recipe. Probably use some special utensils to standardize as gauge and thats it. Its so simple !!!

I guess we can have BKM for everything, every single step that we follow. ..... and probably these BKM can give rise to one of the greatest, yet simplest of product.

Fuji

Fuji was on the maps of formula 1 racing track this season. Its an amazing circuit, enabling teams to play with different strategies, allowing lot of overtaking opportunities and most importantly it is a beautiful place. Last time when I visited Japan, I could see the Fuji mountain from my office and the view was breathtaking. Anyhow, the race this Sunday was pretty eventful, as expected rains made the event very exciting. And more importantly it gave an insight to the teams on how to optimize their strategies and reduce other factors that play a part. Grossly Fuji track can be categorized into two sectors (Though there are more)

1) Straight Long sector : This is straight long sector and if a car has high speed then overtaking is easy. But for high speed a car need to have low down force.

2) Curvilinear Sector : This is how I define this sector. This sector has lot of curves and needs a high grip for a higher speed. A higher grip demands high down force. Thus, teams are left with two gross strategies , that is either to have low down force or a high down force. But since Fuji is known for rains, there is another factor that comes into the play.

On a typical rainy day, the cars on the long straight sector will have higher speeds and therefore will make a cloud of mist behind them, reducing the visibility of the driver behind them. This phenomena deters the driver from overtaking since he cannot see anything infront of him and he has not choice but to maintain certain distance from the driver infront, else he runs into a risk of collision. On the other hand, on curves specially steep curves, cars will have slower speeds and therefore will not generate watery mist. Making the visibility better and thus overtaking easier, provided the car has a high down force. To explains is in more detail I am posting a picture .... hope it explains. Ferrari's did adopt the strategy of high down force, they were able to compete for podium inspite of making some couple of additional stops as compared to other teams.

Habits

Habits are easier to form and difficult to break. Infact people form habits in big corporations and gradually those habits make the corporation. It is important therefore not only to check one's own habits but also of peers, subordinates etc. Normally it is not a big problem when you are working with the people within a region, because normally all the norms are agreed and accepted within the region. You see people around you drinking coffee throughout the day and you also start drinking coffee throughout the day :)

Problems might arise when people start increasingly interacting with people of different regions and nationality. It is hard to define who is following the right habit, because everyone thinks himself righteous. Therefore, in these kind of environment it is a good practice to develop standard methods or practices, best known methods and get them adopted everywhere. One has to have solid reasons when proposing a method and if accepted then it makes life easier for everyone. Also it developed the firm into a closer knitted firm where all the teams play at the level field and communication becomes much easier.

Anyhow, personally I tend to develop numerous habits, some I can list others I cannot :D And here goes the list

1) Drink lot of coffee
2) Give up on my regular exercise
3) Sleep for half an hour more after my alarm rings, although I might not be sleepy
4) Postpone my laundry, iron, haircut, gas fill, grocery
5) Work at home lying on bed, knowingly its not good for my eyes
6) Forget to brush before going to bed.

And lastly I formed this habit of not writing blogs and probably thats a reason why it took such a long time.

Riding against the waves

I believe that stock market is nothing but response of brokers' perception regarding the past, the current and the future economic market. The point I want to make here is that when there is a huge drop in the market people tend to think coherently or atleast their perception matches, that leads to a drop. And now a days we can see this on a global scale, where perceptions are pretty much aligned. As a result we normally see that an event in one part of the world can trigger chain of events globally. Stock market is a very good example, where we often see that in case of notable global events stock market more or less behave coherently. (Atleast in extreme market situations).
But there are always fliers or exceptions, where perceptions tends not to appear aligned to the majority. And any deviations from majority comes to attention.
Its like a wise man among fools, where the wise man thinks of others as fools and others think of wise man as a fool :) Pretty interesting, and it happens with me also, when at times I feel like I am not a fool when actually I am.

Anyhow, today globally bears are riding high everywhere except in KL, its upto you to decide who is who :)

F1 and I

To some F1 is quite boring, cars going round and round and round, for some 70 laps. Overtaking is rare, accidents that interests some are rare and most of the time either Ferrari or McLaren wins.

To me its quite interesting, moreover when I think of my job I can very well relate it to that of Formula1 driver. So let me try to point out how Formula1 driver's job is similar to mine.

1) They keep traveling around the world, so do I (I don't stay at a place for more than 1 month).
2) Every circuit has its own properties with different competitive challenges, similarly every client for me is different, their culture, procedures, etc, and everywhere I have a different problem to face.
3) Every year a new car is released that a driver drives. We also release a new product with cool features every year, in fact more than once a year, that we drive.
4) Lot of testing is done by the driver with respect to tyre, aerodynamics, mechanics etc. I also have to do lot of testing in order to collect data for further development of software, equipment, new features etc.
5) A lot of data from everyrace which helps to improve for the next race. For me also lot of data from every client which helps in better success at other sites.
6) Team keep developing cool features like a new aerodynamic wing or a new software to control transmission etc and the driver has to maximize its use. No different for me, we always have new technologies, I have to make sure to find the right use for it.
7) Driver do roadshows to demonstrate and attract fans :) , We also have to do demo's and present technical papers, presentation etc to attract clients .....
8) For any new car the most annoying thing for the driver is the reliability, and more than often I curse our software engineers and tech supports for all our reliability problems :)
9) In a race every team needs to show the best performance in limited amount of time, similarly in a competitive situation every company needs to show the best performance in limited amount of time.
10) Driver needs to wear special gears so do we need to wear special gears, though we don't have any sponsor logo's

I feel like I am Kimi Raikkonen now ;)

Why Malaysian stock market is the odd one out ?

I have been observing from the past few months that KLSE (Malaysian stock market) behaves quite differently than other stock markets. Will appreciate if anyone can explain that

Today's quick-pick (Look at KLSE)

What happend at Monaco

Monaco is the only full street track and is always fun to watch formula 1 over here, specially if it is raining. It didn't rain but the race was quite amazing. McLarens were unmatched, Ferrari's were no where in the sight by the end of the race. And I was wondering why. Being a Ferrari fan that is something I dont like to see :)

Anyhow, as per car development was concerned, Ferrari's improved their rear wheel cooling system and McLarens their front aerodynamics.

Now what does that mean for the Monaco race.

1) Rear Wheel cooling efficiency : It is difficult to cool rear wheel when there are excessive decelerations and if the rear wheels are not cooled properly then the braking system does not work properly and it is difficult to have high level of decelerations, which means it is difficult to have high speeds. But at Monaco, where one does not need high speed, so why Ferrari wants to prioritize the rear wheel cooling system ?

2) Downforce : McLarens improved their front wing to increase the downforce so that at steep turns their cars have better control. Seems perfect for Monaco.

Does that mean that Ferrari's don't want to win the Monaco or does not care about the Monaco's race. Not quite right. What I think is that Monaco is a track with lot of uncertainty in terms of weather, crashes, pole position etc. So putting time and resources for this kind of race is not justified, when one already has a good car. In-spite it is to have a long term vision and do the needful that matters the most in other races. So for the next 4 or 5 races, where the straight line speed and a high level of declaration matters the most, Ferrari's have rightly developed their cooling system and collected data for further improvement.
Moreover, with the current engine regulation teams need to make sure they don't overburn, specially if there are realiability issues. And so is the case with Ferrari's where they need to make sure that they keep the cars cool :)

I am really looking forward for Ferrari's to be at the front. Let see

Jet Lag - Interesting research

Some interesting research/discoveries about jet lag

• Viagra !! You heard it right, viagra can help fight jet lag. (Though they have not mentioned whether it should be taken before boarding, during the flight or after landing. Its on reader's discretion I guess :) (details)
• Light your knees (details)
  
  

Good Luck

Fly smart and stay ahead of Jet Lag

The topic is from a recent article from economic times, the link for which is below
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/2070275.cms

It mentions some opinions which do not match with my opinion and findings (based on views of my friends from different countries)
The article mentions following points about jet lag management.

1) ET quotes : Interestingly, flying westwards usually causes less jet lag than flying eastwards. “It has been observed that people who travel against the time zone, as in from Europe or US to India, or India to China, the intensity of a jet lag related problem is higher,” says TK Banerjee, head, National Neuroscience Centre, Kolkata.

My opinion : When someone travel from one time zone to another, mostly he has some business/work related activities that he wants to accomplish, in such scenarios the person more than often is so busy with his business/work related activities that he does not feel the pinch of jet lag.
So a Indian going to west for business/work related activities does not feel the effect of jet lag and that holds true for a American/European going to East for Business/work related activities. So in summary a person going to foreign country does not feel the pinch of jet lag primarily because of
- Involvement with business/work related activities throughout the day and evening
- Excitement of going to a foreign country

I have felt this myself, ie if I go from one place to another in different time zone (irrespective of eastward or westward) and if I am busy, I don't have any jet lags. But if my schedule is not so tight then I can have jet lag, which can last as long as for two weeks.

2) ET quotes : If possible, medicos suggest arriving at the destination by late afternoon and avoiding early morning landings. This will ensure that the person can reach his/her place of stay and sleep.

My opinion : One definitely wants to avoid early morning landings since there might be meetings/appointments etc in the morning or during the afternoon, and flight delays/flight exertion can be a spoil sport. But late afternoon a day before is definitely a NO NO. Typically after we land, we spend next 2-5 hours, getting out of airport, reaching destination and checking in/settling in, meals etc., and then there is a strong desire to sleep, primarily because of exertion. So if someone lands in the afternoon, by evening he is fast asleep and then the night becomes difficult. So the ideal time would be evening, so that one can go to sleep just after dinner and wake up next morning, go for meetings/work etc.

3) ET quotes : “A week before the trip, the person should try to advance the sleeping time from say 11 pm to 8 pm in a phased manner. The person should also go out in the sun early in the morning and avoid bright light exposure in the evening,” Mr Ramasubban says. It is better to avoid sleeping pills during the flight.

My Opinion : Does not work. I personally have tried this, it depends a lot on what you do during the flight. Sometimes and for some people it is difficult to sleep during the flights, no matter how much tired or sleepy they are. So as soon as these people land the first thing that they do is to sleep. Typically even if a person is able to sleep during the trip, assuming he is on economy class, he is so exerted that he can easily take another 6-8 hours of sleep.
So the best thing to do, if you are reaching in the evening, is not to worry about what to do during the flight, stay relaxed, watch movie, play games, read novels, sleep etc.

But if you are reaching during the afternoon or morning, then good luck :)

4) ET quotes : Though several over-the-counter drugs may be available in foreign countries for jet lag, it is advisable to avoid them. However, one particular drug — melatonin — is prescribed across the globe to treat jet lag.

My opinion : I am not sure about drugs, since I have never used. But my friends tell me that it helps. So again good luck.

Some of the things that helps

- If possible for for a flat bed business class. You dont have to worry even if you are reaching in the morning :)
- If possible go for an airline which has least traffic, you might be lucky to get the 3-4 seats empty where you can stretch yourself.
- Prefer an airline with personal TV, so that you can manage your time effectively.
- Lastly and most importantly stay relaxed.
- For long flights of more than 15 hours, if possible take a break of 5-6 hours at transit station and have a nap/sleep/shower.

Well these are again primarily based on my views and my travel frequency across time zone difference of more than 8 hours is once per month, on an average and I am doing this from last 1 year.

Still I suffer from jet lags !!

Best Deal

We all purchase commodities, and for some of those we prefer to have the best deal possible. Typically these kind of commodities are expensive commodities (again definition of expensive changes from person to person), which we buy once in a while or may be once in life time. As a human nature, once wants best deal atleast for these kind of commodities. (Best deal might least price with best quality, best post sales service etc or a combination of these).

At times we ourself don't know or don't understand how to define best deal. We might consider few factors (factors defining the best deal) while making a decision, which actually might not be the factors for the best deal provided we knew or have considered other factors, or else even if we wanted to consider other factors we might not have sufficient information about other factor which could have helped in our deal decision.

For example, suppose I want to buy an 160GB 2.5" external hard disk. The factors that I would consider

• Price
• User reviews
• Warranty (is warranty covered all over the world, duration of warranty etc)
• Post sales support
• Compatibility (with laptop/PC etc)
• Time (is the best period of buy or should I wait few more days)
• Companies/Brands/Models
• Ease of use
• etc

So depending on person, different factors might have different weightage. I personally would give higher weightage to Brand, Price, Warranty, Time, with first having highest weightage.

So if someone can help me to educate on a particular product then it would be of great help. For certain products there are sites which provide such kind of information, but more often than not they don't cover all the factors, mostly it is the price comparison that is done, moreover they don't cover whole range of products. So if a site is made where you can define the factors that you want to consider and the weightage can be assigned to each factor and depending on that the site does some kind of optimization to find the product, I guess this kind of site would be a big success and will be of great help.

In today's world, the key to success is product differentiation and customization with prodviding highest value to the customers.

Semiconductor Devices

When I was in Taiwan, I was told that one can find the cheapest external hard disk there. Space is something which is never enough in today's world. So I went with one of my friends to get a small 2.5" one. I was surprised to find that in a months time the prices 160GB external hard disk has fallen by 30USD, one month before it was priced at 160USD and I bought it at 130USD, including the SATA casing. And so was the case with flash drives. I know that the technology nodes are going down, but thats once in a year, whats the reason for such a huge decline in prices ?

Some facts about the semiconductor industry :

• Profit margins of Toshiba and Samsung, flash device makers, have fallen from 15% to 7% in a period of one year. So in 2007 they were operating at much lower margins so obviously in order to maintain the same or more profit margins then they need to produce more. As a result equipment vendors witnessed thier revenues more than expected.
• Sandisk and Toshiba have built up one of the large ts manufacturing plant in Japan.
• Taiwan, Singapore, Japan have seen huge investments.
• Globalization is taking place at an ever faster pace. That is different companies are sharing their products and technologies, which reduces the cycle time between R&D and product roll out. As a result we have seen across the last few years that every year on an average the technology node goes down. I remember when I first joined this industry, production was for 90nm, after one year all the major players had shifted to 65nm. And soon 45 nm will the the fag.

In semiconductor industry, product manufacturers have to rely heavily on demand forecasts, because it takes 2-3 months to roll out a product. Small errors in demand forecasts can lead to huge inventory buildups and the simple theory of demand and supply can lead to huge price discounts.

Intriguingly what will happen if this trend goes on ?

Lost

The travel agent had given up, there were no tickets from San Francisco to India, but luckily Singapore Airlines sales were able to get one for me with a marginal cost, as always I had a very good experience with them and was very happy with the very thought of being back to my home and to meet my parents. I had planned for this trip from a long time and everything was going smoothly. Until a mistake from my company's mailing department, resulted with my passport lost. They had mistakenly posted a mail with no address, containing my passport and as a standard US Postal mail for which there is no tracking available.

It hurts.

Anyhow, according to wikipedia, posts with no mailing address go to a Mail Recovery System, located in Minnesota, where mails are opened in person and routed back if they find mailing information. Again this entire process can take from few weeks to few months.
Few things to note about US Postal
-- 100's of mails get lost everyday and never reach their destination
-- Standard shipping can get as long as 2 weeks to reach from one place to another, forget about getting it back.
-- Mail Recovery Center gets around 7000 mails everday. I am not sure how much is the back lag.

These things make me jittery.

The other option ie to get a duplicate passport is not big of a issue, since it takes few days, the main problem is getting all the visa's, stamped which might take months. Probably, I will wait for sometime before I go for a duplicate one.

This is a very good example of how a small mistake can lead to a very very big problem.

Sameer Mathur

I have come across Taiwanese, Americans, Indians, Iranis, Israelis, with the name SAMEER, directly or indirectly. So I decided to look for it and here is what I found from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page)

First Name : Sameer
Sameer is a name of Sanskrit origin (समीर sameer "gust of wind/a cool gentle breeze on a hot summer day". "Sameer" is also a name from Arabic origin meaning "entertainer". This name is popular amongst Indian Hindus as well as Arab Muslims and Christians.

Last Name : Mathur
According to the Hindu theology Lord Brahma, the Creator, created Lord Chitragupta out of his own body. When Lord Brahma had created all the four Varnas, he thought that there must be someone to keep records and account of each Varna - so he went into deep meditation of the Lord. When this meditation was over, he found standing in front of him a radiant human figure holding a pen and an inkpot in his hands. Thereupon Brahma said, "Thy manifestation has come about through my mind (chitta) and in secret mystical (Gupta) manner, thy name shall be Chitragupta and as thy creation has been from the whole of my body (kaya), therefore thy progeny will be called Kayastha. So ever since then reading and writing has been the hereditary occupation of the Kayasthas, the descendants of Lord Chitragupta, and in all governmental institutions the Kayasthas have held high administrative posts. Mathur's are considered very high end and very intelligent.

Bear is coming !!

Stock Markets round the world are rallying and Sensex is no where behind. Currently Sensex to a large extent follow the US markets, which is in its late bull phase as follows:

1. There has been 17 interest rate rises each of 0.25% till June 06. This is a long and extensive interest rate hike when compare with the previous business cycles. High interest rate is a standard feature of late bull phase in business cycles.
2. Unemployment rate is going down steadily although not reaching full employment yet. Low unemployment rate is also a feature of late bull phase.
3. Commodity price has risen extensively in the past one year. Because booming economy and production, the demand for raw materials tightens. This is a typical feature of late bull phase which usually extend into the bear phase.
4. Inflation signals start to beep. This force the FED to increase interest rate to dampen inflation at the expense of economic growth which might induce bear market. Inflation is a lagging indicator, and is a good signal for bear market.
5. During the regular interest rate rises like the first 15 rate hike, each rise have small impact on the stock market, but the recent response to interest hike is very violent, but this is also a late bull phase features.

That means that Sensex might also go along with Bears and the chart below pretty much confirms that.
Below is a trend chart for Sensex, Ideally the Indice should be within the green lines and any deviations indicate a strong rally which often proceeds with strong bear runs. Again I would not elaborate on the chart and leave it on readers discretion :)

Notes:
1) Red line does not represent actual trend but is representation of forecast.
2) Month of Dec is based on my prejudices and not on any mathematical model.


BSE : SENSEX

Gold

Gold's allure might be irrational, but for centuries the metal called as "barbarous relic" has had mystic hold on the human imagination.

"Gold is the child of Zeus; neither moth nor rust devourth it" Pindar wrote in fourth century BC Fittingly, gold dissolves only in cyanide.

Lately there is lot of buzz over sensex performance, So I was wondering if someone wants to invest in non-equity instruments then what ? What comes to my mind first is Real Estate and probably Gold. So the first question that pops up is that how the investment in these instruments different from stock market, do they have the same risk, do they have the same liquidity, etc ? I don't know.

So I decided to look at the figures, everytime I am in a fix, I always try to look at some pertinent data......more the data better for me, unfortunately data is always insufficient at-least for me :) Anyhow, for Real Estate I wasn't able to find enough data, so I decided to look at GOLD. And came up with a theory which can be inferred from the graph below...... START SAVING MONEY.

I guess the graph is self explanatory (thats one of the reasons why I like graphs :) )


Note : This is a theory that I have made considering the US stock market (and neglecting many other nitty gritty details of US stock market, due to lack of sufficient data with me. I would have liked to have a detailed chart for Dow, S&P or Nasdaq but since I wasn't able to get one, I just tried to look at one aspect ie the great crashes in US history.
Also note that after every crash there is an upward correction in gold prices.

BahrainFormula1

I am a fan of formual1, not just because its car racing and one team looses and other wins, but more of because it involves so much of planning, execution, strategy, skills, innovation and definitely risk taking ability on part of everyone. It starts with testing where the team tries to understand the car, the track, the weather, the competition, the tires etc. Anyways, Bahrain race was amazing, Ferrari's and McLarens, both had a very good package, during the first two legs Ferrari's seemed to dominate and during the last leg McLarens. Though there is no explanation why different team dominated during different legs, here is what I think

a) First two legs both the teams had soft tyres
Now for this race after Malaysia heating problem, Ferrari's used rear brake cooling inlets. So with soft tyres they as everyone could, can speed well but while decelerating where G force goes as high as 5G, Ferrari's had an advantage. Ferrari's would have been able to decelerate faster which produces more heat, in a heated environment (Bahrain) but innovative cooling system helped to compensate that. McLarens would have struggled during decelerations.

b) Last Leg.
Last leg was with hard tyres, that means deceleration is limited by tyres, no more excessive heating by hard decelerations and Ferrari's loosing its advantage. The result do substantiate this theory, with McLarens gaining 3 seconds everylap, relative to Ferrari's.

The question that I am not able to understand is, why McLarens did not include any additional cooling knowing that Bahrain is a hot track ? Also why Ferrari's seemed not so competitive without the cooling advantage ?

Indian Software Industry

The word software and India/Indian often share a symbiotic relationship. Though software is a very broad term still Indians enjoy the privilege of being or at least the perception of being, the forerunners of software industry.

The question arises what is the role of Indian Software industry and why is it important ? A study by Harvard reveals that the consumers of softwares are primarily western countries with US being the primary developer of these software and India playing a big role in maintenance and support of these softwares.

I have seen many large Indian software companies moving from a "software" company to a purely "testing company", the reason being huge demand, better profits and easy support. But are these factors sufficient for a long term growth of a company ? I guess for any company one of the factors in its long term strategy should be value creation for its clients/users. Low cost does create value but it has to be fueled by innovation, which many Indian companies lack and as a result increasingly the clientèle will shift to those places who are just low cost producers. Its happening, talking to some of my friends at IBM I came to know that many jobs have shifted from India to China. I know a big US based company who has shifted the base of a software division from India to Russia. The reason was Russians along with low cost producer, are innovative and efficient. Personally I feel that increasingly companies will move to lower cost producer countries (at least in Software) like Mexico, Russia, China, Philippines etc. There will be jobs cuts in India and before that happens India certainly would have to start thinking seriously from the perspective of innovation.

I am not sure to what extent companies are engaged in Research and Development. If they have active R&D group its great, if not then increasingly companies should spend on Research and Development, they should spend on training their employees so that they are ready, a greater effort need to be made in order to look for opportunities so that they start understanding the software product life cycle.

Sports

During the last one month I have been very active in different sports. In the week of 5th Mar, I was in california and went for skiing, and believe me skiing was simply awesome. Next year I plan to have may be 15 days break during winters and go to Auli, in India just for skiing. During the week of 5th Mar, I was at Dallas and met some of my friends from IBM and we had a great tennis session and a night out playing cards, unfortunately the next day I missed my flight (all due to my credit card, its a long and interesting story). Anyways, I got a chance to come back and again play tennis with my buddies :) Currently at Taiwan I am very regular to swimming and its a great feeling. I am trying to imporve my dolphin stroke but my stamina has gone down drastically and its really difficult to practice the dolphin stroke, which requires great amount of energy. One of my dreams is to do skydiving :D.........hope someday, somewhere, somehow

After a long time

Its been a long time since I have written anything, partly due to my vacation at home and a hectic schedule thereafter. In the last 25 days I have traveled for more than 110 hours, more than 40000 km, 3 different countries and 6 different places. So its all work and travel and I am loving it.

It has been a great month for me, I had completed three important projects and published a paper. I never thought after my graduation that I would publish a paper, but it happened and it was great, the team was much bigger than what was during my graduation, so it was more thrilling this time. Though I guess the motivation and goal behind academic paper and business paper is pretty much the same.

A) For corporations paper or the process of paper creation plays an important, let’s see how

1) Customer Relationship Management

2) To stay competitive

3) Future technological development

4) Benchmarking

All these points are very important for an effective marketing strategy preparation.

B) For students also paper serves more or less similar functions

1) To manage relationship with guide and or to be guides/advisors (Relationship Management)

2) Paper boils down to better grades (competition)

3) Process of publishing a paper to a great extent helps to understand the level of research (Benchmarking)

In all paper serves a great learning and I guess every individual no matter where he/she is working can publish a paper. But I guess in corporations a team can always write a good paper which would serve a great learning for everyone.

Thinking out of the box

I came across few interesting pictures while going through some of the blogs. And this reminds me of "Thinking out of the box". Not many of us will come up with such imaginative answers :).

Out of the box work

Most of us might have come up with out of the box thought, but what about out of the box work.

I still remember one of the teachers asking our 4th standard class what they want to be....I wanted to be fighter jet pilot then, some wanted to become businessmen, some scientists, some wanted to be in merchants navy, some wanted to join army, some wanted to be farmers, some wanted to be artists.....everyone came up with some different answer. But now each of us is either an engineer or doctor. Why ?

We all have heard of out of the box thinking....your professor in college will want you to think out of the box, your boss will always want you to give out of the box thoughtful answers. But no want us to work out of the box. Why ?

May be because we dont know what to do and we all follow the crowd, may be because we dont have the courage to do something different even if we want to, may be we have different priorities, priorities that dictates what we do and what we want to do. May be all of them. But the bottomline is that is it really required to work out of the box, why to work out of the box, would it be any better, would it serve any more puporses. Frankly we dont know, unless we work out of the box or come across people who have worked out of the box.

I thought of this topic after I came across couple of guys who have worked out of the box.

Yesterday I went for a hair cut. In Taiwan most of the people dont speak english but there was this guy who spoke pretty good english and he communicated to his beautiful colleague, how I wanted my hair cut. I was wondering how come this guy speak such a good english, Taiwan does not have english medium schools or universities, all sorts of communication everywhere is in Mandarin. But this guys knows english...this made me talk to him after my hair cut and I came to know that this guy had done his four years of engineering from Australia in Information System. He told that he didnt like working with computers and enjoyed what he is doing more than a IT job. From IT to entrepreneur that too with no work ex. I was really impressed with this guy.

Before that I went to a restaurant and again I met a girl who spoke english quite well. She told that she used to work with a trading company and had a good job. But she wanted to open her own business with her family members and she enjoys what she is doing now more than what she used to do. I was again impressed.

May be Taiwan has many more such talented people and may be that is the reason why Taiwan is amongst few developed asian country.

India definitely needs people who can work out of the box. I guess for our growth and deveopment it is not enough to have employed engineers, doctors, bankers, consultants......we need engineers, doctors, bankers, consultants, businessment who can generate employment, and more importantly those who can work out of the BOX.

Information : Part II

It was a hectic but a very good week for me :) Got two of my important projects completed in a week, 3 weeks before deadline, that makes road for me to travel to Taipei, over at our biggest client in Taiwan. I might move to Taipei next week and hope to see the tallest building of the world .... Taipei 101, and meet some of my friends.

Anyhow, I want to dedicate this blog as a sequel of my last blog "Information".

Gone are the days when the board decides that we should launch a product in India because it is a huge success in US. Gone arethe days when the meteorologist predicts rain or storm next week based on behaviour of birdsand animals and winds.....In todays world all the decision are based on information. But if we dont have that information then what ? Look for it :) Gather the information or have it gathered....else you are going to be turtle and this time rabbit wont sleep.

So the world is going to be with information gatherers and definitely information needs to be combined to make a story, meaningful story. So if someone can provide right information and also do a meaningful analysis then...you have a jackpot. There would be lot more factors to be a winner but atleast you are not a turtle.This would mean lots and lots of consultants, market research firms etc. Yes they would be in demand atleast inIndia, where we have a crunch of information and the market is huge. For example for software industry, we definitely need people who can make software's, but we need more people who can tell what software to make, for whom, when and where to make.

Well why I like this topic is because job is same :) Tell my clients that they have a problem, and they need information and they need to analyze the information and they need to implement something or change something. If they can do all these things, then I will be job less.

Information !!

Again going over the previous blog on internet, it striked me that internet is nothing but information.All kinds of information ..... good, bad and the ugly. But then again if google can provide all the information, then why do I have to call the call centre at times or have to go through some books ? Again, all these call centre executives are trained from some documents and always refer to some kind of documents, which means that there is information somewhere. Yes, there is information somewhere but probably not compiled or do not have a access to. Wait a minute, this means if somehow access is provided to all these kind of information then we dont need any human being to disseminate information no call centre jobs, no libraries, no book stores.

Well if we look over time, thirty years back my professors, then students used to go library, search literally page by page through abstracts of hundreds of journals, choose one that seemed relevent and call the call centre or send a letter to whereever and wait for it to arrive. Total time may be a month. After thirty years, key in a letter on the website of journal and download the relevent journal, take a print out and you are all set. Total time, may be 15 minutes. Take another example, I recently ordered a laptop from lenovo. What you have to do is go to the website choose what ever you want, key in your credit card information and thats it. No human interaction,information dissemination is perfect for decision making and executing the process. This means that this process has eliminated thousands of jobs related to call centre, the purpose of of all these jobs was to disseminate information. So as we move forward, I can see that most of the information can be obtained from internet. No more calls to customer care, where you have to wait for 30 minutes at times to get hold of a customerrepresentative. Probably we will have printers which can download the book we want, print it and generatea copy similar to what we get in a book store.

Call centre being a big industry in India will be non existent as compared to today, sometime in future.

Well does that means we sit in office and we will have all the information right in-front....quite not right.


I will go through in my next blog, what kind of information we wont be able to get on internet. And I guess that information would be worth a lot.

The graph below depicts the whole blog in one graph ie as we move forward information dissimination time would decrease

Trip to Taiwan : Part II

Very asian, Taiwan is a great place to be at. Though its been just few days for me over herewhat I have observed so far is while going to office in a cab. It takes me 45 minutes to reach office andsome of the things that I have noticed so far, which kind of strikes me are

1) Most of the taxis are Camry, Merc, Galant...infact I guess they have the best maintained taxis in Asia or as compared to US.
2) All the two wheelers are scooty like (not even like kinetic honda which has much better power, there are almost no bikes. I wonder whether it to reduce the average speed of two wheelers.
3) Helmets are like a oval bowls turned upside down :)
4) On narrow streets with a speed limit of 40km/hr, taxi driver drives at 80-90 km/hr
5) They introduced Bullet train couple of days back just like what Japanese have, and it passes by one of my clients site. This makes bring them in the elite list of 6 countires having bullet/HiSpeed train.(Thier typical speed is around 240Km/hr)
6) They have Mandarin versioned name for everything, even for English company names. For example if you tell taxi driver that you want to go to UMC (United MicroElectronics Corporation), he wont understand, you have totell him that you want to go to "Lien Tien", which is the chinese version of UMC.

The very first thing that I needed in Taiwan was a cell phone, the US sim card showed signal, but I wasnt able to make any calls. I searched for local GSM service providers, but the problem was visitors cant get a cell phone sim card, unless they have ARC ie Alien Resident Certificate. Inspite of reading this on the websiteI went to the office of a GSM provider known as Chunghwa. It looked like a typical BSNL office lil bit betterbut the problem was no one knew English. Finally they managed to get one lady who pretty much understood what I wanted and she told me that I need a ARC in order to get a SIM card. I gave them my passport with an expression "THATS WHAT I HAVE". Instead of looking at my Taiwan Visa they kept on examining my US visa , and finally gave me a SIM card. :)Well this solved lot of problems for me.

Again no graphs for this blog.

Trip to Taiwan

After travelling continuously for 12 hours, I was again somewhere in Tokyo at a place commonly known as Nagoya Airport, but this time I am just transiting on my way to Tainan, a city located in southern part of Tawain, which separates, Nagoya with 3 hours of flight and 3 hours of drive.

Pilot anounced to fasten seat belts and after a while it was just few meters above sea level, it seemed like we are landing in the middle of the ocean. I thought after all its Japan anything is possible :) It was really an amazing view, it might be just my seat location whick resulted in the affect, but for a while it send jitters from the very thought that you are gonna land in the sea.

Soon I recognized the Nagoya airport, with a long open air, caged concourse, where you can sit for hours and enjoy the specular view of flights taking off and landing. I like Nagoya airport amongst other few asian airports for the fact that it has very good choice of food at the airport, from indian, thai, japanese to all american cuisines and that too cheap. You can get a good meal in 1000 yuan ie roughly 10 USD. The restrooms are impeccable with state of art technologies.

Let me list the the international airports I have visited and which one I like and why. So here goes the list

1) Chatrapati Shivaji - Mumbai

2) Indra Gandhi - Delhi Int

3) Chennai int

4) Changi Airport - Singapore

5) SFO - San Francisco, USA

6) JFK - New York, USA

7) Newark Liberty - Newark, USA

8) Dulles - Washington, USA

9) Swiss (I dont know whats the name of the airport)

10) Hong Kong

11) Incheon - Korea

13) Boston - USA

14) LAX - Los Angeles, USA

15) Nagoya - Japan

16) Chagni - Taiwan

17) Dallas Fort Worth - Dallas, USA

Particulalry I like Changi (Singapore) Airport, for the following reasons

1) Aesthetically well designed

2) Very good service.

3) Very Good transit hotels, but need to book atleast 2 weeks before

4) Best value for money for liquors and smokes

5) Free foot massagers located throughout the airport, so just relax

Other airport that I like is Nagoya - Japan, for the reasons mentioned before.As such American airports are not that well maintained, probably due to high high labour cost. In asian countries airports in general are well maintained atleast in developed asian countries, again probably due to low wages.

During the privatisation bids of Mumbai and Delhi, airports I was hoping that Changi Airport gets the contract :) Anyhow, I hope the new international airports at Mumbai and Delhi would be one of the best in the world, people can say that they want to transit via Indian airports, those are the best in Asia !!!

PS: Today I dont have time and also dont know how to include a graph or a chart. Your suggestions are welcome.

Internet Part II

We all make decisions and judgements based on some data in the form of experiences (own or of others), preconceived notions, or at times based on intution or gut feelings. As far as I am concerned most of my decisions are based on experiences, now since I cant experience everything, the best way is to get to know the experience of other people and assume that my experience would more or less be aligned to those of others in normal circumstances. For example suppose I want to buy a camera, I will go and read some reviews/blogs/articles etc, again the more reviewers agree that a particular camera is good, the easier it is for me decide since increased data set reduces the effect of fliers which might skew the evaluation. For instanace if I read two reviews and one reviewer evaluates the camera with positive note and the other with negetive note. Now for me its difficult to decide since I dont know whom to trust, but suppose I read reviews of 50 people and 45 approves for the camera and rest 5 disapproves of it, then it is easier since I can mark those 5 as fliers.

So I always prefer lot of data, and internet to a great extent helps me with this. I am sure soon, google or some company will come with a review software where you key in a product name and it will tell you how many people like that thing and how many did not. It will also categorize it into different region, so may be in India people like canon camera and in Japan people like Sony camera, etc. All these statistics will make our life easier and also it will help the companies to evaluate and customize thier products.

The underlying phenomena, that would help this happen is internet. More and more people are spending more and more time on internet, that means more and more reviews/blogs/articles/orkut communitites etc. and therefore our decision making process would be faster.

Yesterday just for fun I thought of asking people how much time they spend on internet and the results were really amazing. Though I dont have much data, based on 15 people response it seems that on an average every person spends 8 hours on internet. That means if you remove the the time one is sleeping (lets say 7 hours), he/she is spending 50 % of time in internet. And I guess if you remove the time one spends for food/daily activities/travel, rest of the time is spent on internet. This is really amazing. Imagine the internet was born in 1991 and probably it came to India somewhere in 1996, so within 10 years it has become an integral part of one's life (Again data set is small and taken from engineers/students who always have internet access).

Lets see how the data set looks like for those 15 people who have responded with thier internet usage.