The Ringside

Kamal Haasan in IIT Mumbai - 2010

2012-01-22T10:05:00.002+05:30

Kamal Hassan at IIT Mumbai's SJ School of Management (2010)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dz_8RoyNs60&feature=share

Subroto Bagchi - "Go Kiss the world"

2010-08-08T12:32:00.002+05:30

Subroto Bagchi speaks at IIM Bangalore in 2006...

http://pdfcast.org/pdf/subroto-bagchi-go-kiss-the-world

Chetan Bhagat - "Keep the Spark"

2010-08-02T21:16:00.003+05:30

Inaugural Speech by Mr.Chetan Bhagat for the new batch at the
Symbiosis BBA program 2008.

Chetan Bhagat - Keep the Spark

Good Morning everyone and thank you for giving me this chance to speak to you.

This day is about you. You, who have come to this college,

leaving the comfort of your homes (or in some cases discomfort), to become

something in your life. I am sure you are excited.. There are

few days in human life when one is truly elated. The first day in college is

one of them. When you were getting ready today, you felt a

tingling in your stomach. What would the auditorium be like, what would the

teachers be like, who are my new classmates - there is so

much to be curious about. I call this excitement, the spark within you that

makes you feel truly alive today. Today I am going to talk about

keeping the spark shining. Or to put it another way, how to be happy most, if

not all the time.

Where do these sparks start? I think we are born with them. My 3-year old twin

boys have a million sparks. A little Spiderman toy can make

them jump on the bed. They get thrills from creaky swings in the park. A story

from daddy gets them excited. They do a daily countdown for

birthday party – several months in advance – just for the day they will cut

their own birthday cake.

I see students like you, and I still see some sparks.. But when I see older

people, the spark is difficult to find.. That means as we age,

the spark fades. People whose spark has faded too much are dull, dejected,

aimless and bitter. Remember Kareena in the first half of

Jab We Met vs the second half? That is what happens when the spark is lost. So

how to save the spark?

Imagine the spark to be a lamp's flame. The first aspect is nurturing - to

give your spark the fuel, continuously. The second is to guard

against storms.

To nurture, always have goals. It is human nature to strive, improve and

achieve full potential. In fact, that is success. It is what is

possible for you. It isn't any external measure - a certain cost to company

pay package, a particular car or house.

Most of us are from middle class families. To us, having material landmarks is

success and rightly so. When you have grown up where

money constraints force everyday choices, financial freedom is a big

achievement.

But it isn't the purpose of life. If that was the case, Mr Ambani would not

show up for work. Shah Rukh Khan would stay at home and not

dance anymore. Steve Jobs won't be working hard to make a better iPhone, as

he sold Pixar for billions of dollars already. Why do they

do it? What makes them come to work everyday?

They do it because it makes them happy. They do it because it makes them feel

alive. Just getting better from current levels feels good.

If you study hard, you can improve your rank. If you make an effort to interact

with people, you will do better in interviews. If you

practice, your cricket will get better. You may also know that you cannot

become Tendulkar, yet. But you can get to the next level.

Striving for that next level is important.

Nature designed with a random set of genes and circumstances in which we were

born. To be happy, we have to accept it and make the most of

nature's design. Are you? Goals will help you do that.

I must add, don't just have career or academic goals.. Set goals to give you

a balanced, successful life. I use the word balanced before

successful. Balanced means ensuring your health, relationships, mental peace

are all in good order.

There is no point of getting a promotion on the day of your breakup. There is

no fun in driving a car if your back hurts. Shopping is not

enjoyable if your mind is full of tensions.

You must have read some quotes - Life is a tough race, it is a marathon or

whatever.. No, from what I have seen so far, life is one of

those races in nursery school. Where you have to run with a marble in a spoon

kept in your mouth. If the marble falls, there is no point

coming first. Same with life, where health and relationships are the marble.

Your striving is only worth it if there is harmony in your

life. Else, you may achieve the success, but this spark, this feeling of being

excited and alive, will start to die.

One last thing about nurturing the spark - don't take life seriously. One

of my yoga teachers used to make students laugh during classes.

One student asked him if these jokes would take away something from the yoga

practice. The teacher said - don't be serious, be sincere.

This quote has defined my work ever since. Whether its my writing, my job, my

relationships or any of my goals. I get thousands of opinions

on my writing everyday. There is heaps of praise, there is intense criticism.

If I take it all seriously, how will I write? Or rather,

how will I live? Life is not to be taken seriously, as we are really temporary

here. We are like a pre-paid card with limited validity. If

we are lucky, we may last another 50 years. And 50 years is just 2,500

weekends. Do we really need to get so worked up? It's ok, bunk a few

classes, goof up a few interviews, fall in love. We are people, not programmed

devices.

I've told you three things - reasonable goals, balance and not taking it

too seriously that will nurture the spark. However, there are four

storms in life that will threaten to completely put out the flame. These must

be guarded against. These are disappointment, frustration,

unfairness and loneliness of purpose.

Disappointment will come when your effort does not give you the expected

return. If things don't go as planned or if you face failure.

Failure is extremely difficult to handle, but those that do come out stronger.

What did this failure teach me? is the question you will

need to ask. You will feel miserable. You will want to quit, like I wanted to

when nine publishers rejected my first book. Some IITians

kill themselves over low grades – how silly is that? But that is how much

failure can hurt you.

But it's life. If challenges could always be overcome, they would cease to

be a challenge. And remember - if you are failing at

something, that means you are at your limit or potential. And that's where

you want to be.

Disappointment's cousin is frustration, the second storm. Have you ever

been frustrated? It happens when things are stuck. This is

especially relevant in India. From traffic jams to getting that job you

deserve, sometimes things take so long that you don't know if you

chose the right goal. After books, I set the goal of writing for Bollywood, as

I thought they needed writers. I am called extremely

lucky, but it took me five years to get close to a release.

Frustration saps excitement, and turns your initial energy into something

negative, making you a bitter person. How did I deal with

it? A realistic assessment of the time involved – movies take a long time to

make even though they are watched quickly, seeking a certain

enjoyment in the process rather than the end result – at least I was learning

how to write scripts , having a side plan – I had my third

book to write and even something as simple as pleasurable distractions in your

life - friends, food, travel can help you overcome it.

Remember, nothing is to be taken seriously. Frustration is a sign somewhere,

you took it too seriously.

Unfairness - this is hardest to deal with, but unfortunately that is how our

country works. People with connections, rich dads, beautiful

faces, pedigree find it easier to make it – not just in Bollywood, but

everywhere. And sometimes it is just plain luck. There are so few

opportunities in India, so many stars need to be aligned for you to make it

happen. Merit and hard work is not always linked to

achievement in the short term, but the long term correlation is high, and

ultimately things do work out. But realize, there will be some

people luckier than you.

In fact, to have an opportunity to go to college and understand this speech in

English means you are pretty darn lucky by Indian standards.

Let's be grateful for what we have and get the strength to accept what we

don't. I have so much love from my readers that other writers

cannot even imagine it. However, I don't get literary praise. It's ok.

I don't look like Aishwarya Rai, but I have two boys who I think are

more beautiful than her. It's ok. Don't let unfairness kill your

spark..

Finally, the last point that can kill your spark is isolation. As you grow

older you will realize you are unique. When you are little, all

kids want Ice cream and Spiderman. As you grow older to college, you still are

a lot like your friends. But ten years later and you realize

you are unique. What you want, what you believe in, what makes you feel, may be

different from even the people closest to you. This can

create conflict as your goals may not match with others. . And you may drop

some of them. Basketball captains in college invariably stop

playing basketball by the time they have their second child. They give up

something that meant so much to them. They do it for their family.

But in doing that, the spark dies. Never, ever make that compromise. Love

yourself first, and then others.

There you go. I've told you the four thunderstorms - disappointment,

frustration, unfairness and isolation. You cannot avoid them, as like

the monsoon they will come into your life at regular intervals. You just need

to keep the raincoat handy to not let the spark die.

I welcome you again to the most wonderful years of your life. If someone gave

me the choice to go back in time, I will surely choose

college. But I also hope that ten years later as well, you eyes will shine the

same way as they do today. That you will Keep the Spark

alive, not only through college, but through the next 2,500 weekends. And I

hope not just you, but my whole country will keep that spark

alive, as we really need it now more than any moment in history. And there is

something cool about saying - I come from the land of billion sparks.

2008-03-02T22:04:00.000+05:30

Arguments against Enterprise Software:

http://sloanreview.mit.edu/smr/issue/2007/fall/01/

+ related blog from HBS:
http://blog.hbs.edu/faculty/amcafee/index.php/faculty_amcafee_v3/comments/are_enterprise_systems_part_of_the_problem_or_the_solution/

Steve Jobs "Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish"

2007-03-04T09:03:00.000+05:30

Another famous speech, this one by Steve Jobs.

Thank you. I'm honored to be with you today for your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. Truth be told, I never graduated from college and this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation.

Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories. The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first six months but then stayed around as a drop-in for another eighteen months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out? It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife, except that when I popped out, they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking, "We've got an unexpected baby boy. Do you want him?" They said, "Of course." My biological mother found out later that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would go to college.

This was the start in my life. And seventeen years later, I did go to college, but I naïvely chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, and no idea of how college was going to help me figure it out, and here I was, spending all the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back, it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out, I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me and begin dropping in on the ones that looked far more interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms. I returned Coke bottles for the five-cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example.

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer was beautifully hand-calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and sans-serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me, and we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts, and since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them.

If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on that calligraphy class and personals computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do.

Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college, but it was very, very clear looking backwards 10 years later. Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards, so you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something--your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever--because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.

My second story is about love and loss. I was lucky. I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents' garage when I was twenty. We worked hard and in ten years, Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4,000 employees. We'd just released our finest creation, the Macintosh, a year earlier, and I'd just turned thirty, and then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew, we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so, things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge, and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our board of directors sided with him, and so at thirty, I was out, and very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating. I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down, that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure and I even thought about running away from the Valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me. I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I'd been rejected but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods in my life. During the next five years I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the world's first computer-animated feature film, "Toy Story," and is now the most successful animation studio in the world.

In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT and I returned to Apple and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance, and Lorene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful-tasting medicine but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life's going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love, and that is as true for work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work, and the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking, and don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it, and like any great relationship it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don't settle.

My third story is about death. When I was 17 I read a quote that went something like "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "no" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important thing I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life, because almost everything--all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure--these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago, I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctors' code for "prepare to die." It means to try and tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next ten years to tell them, in just a few months. It means to make sure that everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope, the doctor started crying, because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and, thankfully, I am fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept. No one wants to die, even people who want to go to Heaven don't want to die to get there, and yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It's life's change agent; it clears out the old to make way for the new. right now, the new is you. But someday, not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it's quite true. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalogue, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stuart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late Sixties, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras. it was sort of like Google in paperback form thirty-five years before Google came along. I was idealistic, overflowing with neat tools and great notions. Stuart and his team put out several issues of the The Whole Earth Catalogue, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-Seventies and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath were the words, "Stay hungry, stay foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. "Stay hungry, stay foolish." And I have always wished that for myself, and now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay hungry, stay foolish.

Thank you all, very much.

Thomas L. Friedman - "Listen to Your Heart."

2007-03-04T08:59:00.000+05:30

Hi,

Could not update for a while. Lets get on with it again, but with something slightly offtrack;

Thomas L. Friedman
"Listen to Your Heart."

Commencement address at Williams College
Williamstown, Massachusetts USA
June 5, 2005

Tom Friedman is an award-winning author and foreign affairs columnist of The New York Times.

----------------------------------

It is an honor to stand before you this morning -- you the class of 2005. I've been a journalist all my life. It's been a great ride. And what I thought I would talk with you about today is not the stories I've covered but some of the lessons I accidentally learned along the way about getting through life. As Yogi Berra once said, "You can see a lot by just listening," or maybe it was "You can hear a lot just by watching." Either way, the reporter's life has allowed me to do a lot of both, and for the past few months I've been jotting down a few of the things that might be relevant advice to you all on graduation day.

Lesson #1 is very simple. As the writer Dan Pink noted in New York Times just yesterday, it is a piece of advice that graduation speakers all over the land will be giving to graduates today, and it goes like this: Do what you love. But the reason that advice is no longer, what Pink called "warm and gooey career advice'" but actually a very "hard-headed'" survival strategy, is because, as I like to put it, the world is getting flat. Yes, mom and dad, you have paid tens of thousands of dollars to have your child get a Williams education only to have their graduation speaker declare on their last day on campus that the world is flat.

"Gaining speed, she went on: 'You want to know what I make? I make kids wonder, I make them question, I make them criticize, I make them apologize and mean it, I make them write and I make them read, read, read. I make them show all their work in math and hide it all on their final drafts in English.' Susan then stopped and cleared her throat. 'I make them understand that if you have the brains, then follow your heart. And if someone ever tries to judge you by what you make in money, you pay them no attention.'"

What is flattening the world is our ability to automate more work with computers and software and to transmit that work anywhere in the world that it can be done more efficiently or cheaply thanks to the new global fiber optic network. The flatter the world gets, the more essential it is that you do what you love, because, as Pink notes, all the boring, repetitive jobs are going to be automated or outsourced in a flat world. The good jobs that will remain will be those that cannot be automated or outsourced; they will be the jobs that demand or encourage some uniquely human creative flair, passion and imagination. In other words, jobs that can only be done by people who love what they do.

You see, when the world gets flat everyone should want to be an untouchable. Untouchables in my lexicon are people whose jobs cannot be outsourced or automated. They cannot be shipped to India or done by a machine. So who are the untouchables? Well, first they are people who are really special -- Michael Jordan or Barbra Streisand. Their talents can never be automated or outsourced. Second are people who are really specialized -- brain surgeons, designers, consultants or artists. Third are people who are anchored and whose jobs have to be done in a specific location -- from nurses to hairdressers to chefs -- and lastly, and this is going to apply to many of us, people who are really adaptable -- people can change with changing times and changing industries.

There is a much better chance that you will make yourself special, specialized or adaptable, a much better chance that you will bring that something extra, what Dan Pink called "a sense of curiosity, aesthetics, and joyfulness'" to your work, if do you what you love and love what you do.

I learned that quite by accident by becoming a journalist. It all started when I was in 10th grade. First, I took a journalism class from a legendary teacher at my high school, named Hattie Steinberg, who had more influence on me than any adult other than my parents. Under Hattie's inspiration, journalism just grabbed my imagination. Hattie was a single woman nearing 60 years old by the time I had her as a teacher. She was the polar opposite of cool. But she sure got us all excited about writing, and we hung around her classroom like it was the malt shop and she was the disc jockey "Wolfman Jack." To this day, her 10th grade journalism class in Room 313 was the only journalism class I have ever taken. The other thing that happened to me in 10th grade, though, was that my parents took me to Israel over the Christmas break. And from that moment on I fell in love with the Middle East. One of the first articles I ever published in my Minnesota high school paper was in 10th grade, in 1969. It was an interview with an Israeli general who had been a major figure in the '67 war. He had come to give a lecture at the University of Minnesota; his name was Ariel Sharon. Little did I know how many times our paths would cross in the years to come.

Anyway, by the time 10th grade was over, I still wasn't quite sure what career I wanted, but I sure knew what I loved: I loved journalism and I loved the Middle East. Now growing up in Minnesota at that time, in a middle-class household, I never thought about going away to college. Like all my friends, I enrolled at the University of Minnesota. But unlike my friends, I decided to major in Arabic and Middle Eastern studies. There were not a lot of kids at the University of Minnesota studying Arabic back then. Norwegian, yes; Swedish, yes; Arabic, no. But I loved it; my parents didn't mind; they could see I enjoyed it. But if I had a dime for every time one of my parents' friends said to me, "Say Tom, your Dad says you're studying Arabic; what are you going to do with that?" Well, frankly, it beat the heck out of me. But this was what I loved and it just seemed that that was what college was for.

I eventually graduated from Brandeis with a degree in Mediterranean studies and went onto graduate school at Oxford. During my first year in England -- this was 1975 -- I was walking down the street with my then-girlfriend and now-wife, Ann, and I noticed a front-page headline from the Evening Standard tabloid. It said, "President Carter to Jews: If Elected I Promise to Fire Dr. K." I thought, "Isn't that interesting?" Jimmy Carter is running against Gerald Ford for president, and in order to get elected, he's trying to win Jewish votes by promising to fire the first-ever Jewish Secretary of State. I thought about how odd that was and what might be behind it. And for some reason, I went back to my dorm room in London and wrote a short essay about it. No one asked me to, I just did it. Well, my then-girlfriend, now-wife's family knew the editorial-page editor of the Des Moines Register, and my then-girlfriend, now-wife brought the article over to him when she was home for spring break. He liked it, printed it, and paid me $50 for it. And I thought that was the coolest thing in the whole world. I was walking down the street, I had an idea, I wrote it down, and someone gave me $50. I've been hooked ever since. A journalist was born and I never looked back.

So whatever you plan to do, whether you plan to travel the world next year, go to graduate school, join the workforce, or take some time off to think, don't just listen to your head. Listen to your heart. It's the best career counselor there is. Do what you really love to do and if you don't know quite what that is yet, well, keep searching, because if you find it, you'll bring that something extra to your work that will help ensure you will not be automated or outsourced. It help make you an untouchable radiologist, an untouchable engineer, or an untouchable teacher.

Indeed, let me close this point with a toned down version of a poem that was written by the slam poet Taylor Mali. A friend sent it to my wife, who's a schoolteacher. It is called: "What Teachers Make." It contains some wisdom that I think belongs in every graduation speech. It goes like this: "The dinner guests were sitting around the table discussing life. One man, a CEO, decided to explain the problem with education. He argued this way. 'What's a kid going to learn from someone who decided his best option in life was to become a teacher? You know, it's true what they say about teachers: 'Those who can do, do; those who can't do, teach.' To corroborate his statement he said to another guest, 'Hey, Susan, you're a teacher. Be honest, what do you make?'

"Susan, who had a reputation for honesty and frankness, replied, 'You want to know what I make? I make kids work harder than they ever thought they could and I can make kids sit through 40 minutes of study hall in absolute silence. I can make a C-plus feel like the Congressional Medal of Honor and an A feel like a slap in the face if the student didn't do his or her very best.' Susan continued, 'I can make parents tremble when I call home or feel almost like they won the lottery when I tell them how well their child is progressing.' Gaining speed, she went on: 'You want to know what I make? I make kids wonder, I make them question, I make them criticize, I make them apologize and mean it, I make them write and I make them read, read, read. I make them show all their work in math and hide it all on their final drafts in English.' Susan then stopped and cleared her throat. 'I make them understand that if you have the brains, then follow your heart. And if someone ever tries to judge you by what you make in money, you pay them no attention.' Susan then paused. 'You want to know what I make?' she said. 'I make a difference. What about you?'"

Lesson #2. The second lesson I learned from journalism is that being a good listener is one of the great keys to life. My friend and colleague, Bob Schieffer of CBS News used to say to me, "The biggest stories I missed as a journalist happened because I was talking when I should have been listening." The ability to be a good listener is one of the most under-appreciated talents a person or a country can have. People often ask me how I, an American Jew, have been able operate in the Arab/Muslim world for 20 years, and my answer to them is always the same. The secret is to be a good listener. It has never failed me. You can get away with really disagreeing with people as long as you show them the respect of really listening to what they have to say and taking it into account when and if it makes sense. Indeed, the most important part of listening is that it is a sign of respect. It's not just what you hear by listening that is important. It is what you say by listening that is important. It's amazing how you can diffuse a whole roomful of angry people by just starting your answer to a question with the phrase, "You're making a legitimate point" or "I hear what you say" and really meaning it. Never underestimate how much people just want to feel that they have been heard, and once you have given them that chance they will hear you.

I went to Saudi Arabia after 9/11 after having written a series of extremely critical columns about the Saudi regime. And I was always struck by how Saudis received me, Saudis who weren't prepped to receive me. The encounter would often go something like this:
"Hi, I'm Tom Friedman."
"The Tom Friedman who writes for The New York Times?"
"Yes, that Tom Friedman."
"You're here?"
"Yes, I'm here."
"They gave you a visa?"
"Yes, I didn't come illegally."
"You know, I hate everything you write. Would you come to my house for dinner so I could get some friends together to talk to you?"

If you really want to get through to people as a journalist, you first have to open their ears, and the best way to open their ears is to first open your own -- show them the respect of listening, it's amazing what they will let you say after that, and it is amazing what you might learn.

Lesson #3 is that the most enduring skill you can bring to the workplace is also one of the most important skills you always had to bring to reporting -- and that is the ability to learn how to learn. I have always thought that the greatest thing about being a reporter was that you just get to keep getting Master's degrees. Each time I took a new beat, from Beirut to Jerusalem to Diplomacy to the White House to the Treasury I got to get the equivalent of a Master's degree in each of those subjects -- just by reporting on them for an extended period.

So while I hope that you all came out of here with some specialty, I hope even more that you came out of here having learned how to learn. That too is going to be really important if you want to be an untouchable, because jobs are going to change faster and faster in a flat world. Believe me, I know. You see, about 18 months ago I went to Bangalore, India to do a documentary about outsourcing. We shot about 60 hours of film in ten days, and across those ten days I got progressively sicker and sicker. Because somewhere between the Indian entrepreneur who wanted to do my taxes from Bangalore, and the one who wanted to write my new software from Bangalore and one who wanted to read my X-rays from Bangalore, and the one who wanted to trace my lost luggage on Delta airlines from Bangalore, I realized that people were doing things I could not explain or understand. I realized that my own intellectual software needed updating. I came home and told my editors I need to go on leave immediately. That is why I wrote "The World is Flat." I was retooling myself. None of us is immune from that.

Now, while I have been on book tour these few months talking about the flat world, several parents have come up to me and said, "Mr. Friedman, my daughter is studying Chinese, she's going to be OK, right?" As if this was going to be the new key to lifetime employment.
Well, not exactly. I think it is great to study Chinese, I told them, but the enduring skill you really need in a flat world is an ability to learn how to learn. The ability to learn how to learn is what enables you to adapt and stay special or specialized. Well then, a ninth grader in St. Paul asked me, how do you learn how to learn?

"Wow," I said to him, "that's a really good question." I told him that I think the best way to learn how to learn is to go around and ask all your friends who are the best teachers in your school and then just take their classes, whether it is Greek Mythology or physics. Because I think probably the best way to learn how to learn is to love learning. When I think back on my favorite teachers, I am not sure I remember much anymore of what they taught me, but I sure remember enjoying learning it.

Lesson #4 is: Don't get carried away with the gadgets. I started as a reporter in Beirut working on an Adler manual typewriter. I can tell you that the stories I wrote for the New York Times on that manual typewriter are still some of my favorites. Ladies and gentlemen, it is not about the skis. In this age of laptops and PDAs, the Internet and Google, mp3s and iPods, remember one thing: all these tools might make you smarter, but they sure won't make you smart, they might extend your reach, but they will never tell you what to say to your neighbor over the fence, or how to comfort a friend in need, or how to write a lead that sings or how to imagine a breakthrough in science or literature. You cannot download passion, imagination, zest and creativity -- all that stuff that will make you untouchable. You have to upload it, the old fashioned way, under the olive tree, with reading, writing and arithmetic, travel, study, reflection, museum visits and human interaction.

Look, no one is more interested in technology than I am, but the rumor is true: I was the last person in my family and on my block to get a mobile phone, and I still only use it for outgoing calls. Otherwise, as my daughters will tell you, I never keep it on. And don't leave me a message, because I still don't know how to retrieve them and I have no intention of learning. Because I can't concentrate if people are constantly pinging me. You may also have noticed, I do not put my email address on my column. Unless readers go through all the trouble to call the paper to get my web address, if they want to communicate with me, they have to sit down and write me a letter. That is mail without an "e." And yes, I only converted to Microsoft Word when I started my latest book a year ago and that is because Xywrite, the stone-age writing program I have been using since the 1980s, just couldn't interface anymore with my new laptop. I am not a Luddite, per se, but I am a deliberately late adopter. I prefer to keep my tools simple, so I focus as much of my energy on the listening, writing and problem solving -- not on the gadgets. That is also why if I had one fervent wish it would be that every modem sold in America would come with a warning label from the surgeon general, and that warning would simply say: "Judgment Not Included."

Lesson #5 is this: Always remember, there is a difference between skepticism and cynicism. Too many journalists, and too many of our politicians, have lost sight of that boundary line. I learned that lesson very early in my career. In 1982, I was working in the Business section of The Times and was befriended by a young editor there named Nathaniel Nash. Nathaniel was a gentle soul and a born again Christian. He liked to come by and talk to me about Israel and the Holyland. In April 1982, The Times assigned me to cover the Lebanese civil war, and at my office goodbye party Nathaniel whispered to me: "I'm going to pray for your safety." I never forgot that. I always considered his prayers my good luck charm, and when I walked out of Beirut in one piece three years later, one of the first things I did was thank Nathaniel for keeping watch over me. He liked that a lot.

I only wish I could have returned the favor. You see a few years later Nathaniel gave up editing and became a reporter himself, first in Argentina and then later as the Times business reporter in Europe, based in Germany. Nathaniel was a wonderful reporter, who was one of the most un-cynical people I ever knew. Indeed, the book on Nathaniel as a reporter was that he was too nice. His colleagues always doubted that anyone that nice could ever succeed in journalism, but somehow he triumphed over this handicap and went from one successful assignment to another. It was because Nathaniel intuitively understood that there was a big difference between skepticism and cynicism. Skepticism is about asking questions, being dubious, being wary, not being gullible, but always being open to being persuaded of a new fact or angle. Cynicism is about already having the answers -- or thinking you do -- answers about a person or an event. The skeptic says, "I don't think that's true; I'm going to check it out." The cynic says: "I know that's not true. It couldn't be. I'm going to slam him." Nathaniel always honored that line.

Unfortunately, Nathaniel Nash, at age 44, was the sole American reporter traveling on U.S. Commerce Secretary Ron Brown's airplane when it crashed into a Croatian hillside in 1996. Always remember, real journalists are not those loud mouth talking heads you see on cable television. Real journalists are reporters, like Nathaniel Nash, who go off to uncomfortable and often dangerous places like Croatia and get on a military plane to chase after a visiting dignitary, without giving it a second thought -- all to get a few fresh quotes, maybe a scoop, or even just a paragraph of color that no one else had. My prayers were too late for Nathaniel, but he was such a good soul, I am certain that right now he is sitting at God's elbow -- taking notes, with skepticism not cynicism. So be a skeptic, not a cynic. We have more than enough of those in our country already, and so much more creative juice comes from skepticism, not cynicism.

Lesson #6. Nathaniel's untimely death only reinforced for me the final lesson I am going to impart to you this afternoon. It's very brief. It's "Call Your Mama." For me, the most searing images and stories of 9/11 were the tales of all those people who managed to use a cell phone to call their loved ones to say a last goodbye from a hijacked airplane or a burning tower. But think of the hundreds of others who never got a chance to say goodbye or a final "I love you."
When you were just in elementary school there was a legendary football coach at the University of Alabama named Bear Bryant. And late in his career, after his mother had died, Bell South Telephone Company asked Bear Bryant to do a TV commercial. As best I can piece together from the news reports, the commercial was supposed to be very simple -- just a little music and Coach Bryant saying in his tough coach's voice, "Have you called your Mama today?" On the day of the filming, though, when it came time for Coach Bryant to recite his simple line, he decided to ad lib something. He looked into the camera and said, "Have you called your Mama today? I sure wish I could call mine." That was how the commercial ran, and it got a huge response from audiences. My father died when I was 19. He never got to see me do what I love. I sure wish I could call him. My mom is 86 years old and lives in a home for people with dementia. She doesn't remember so well anymore, but she still remembers that my column runs twice a week. She doesn't quite remember the days, so every day she goes through The New York Times, and if she finds my column, she often photocopies it and passes it out to the other dementia patients in her nursery home. If you think that isn't important to me than you don't know what is important.

Your parents love you more than you will ever know. So if you take one lesson away from this talk, take this one: Call your Mama, regularly. And your Papa. You will always be glad you did.

Well, class of 2005, that about does it for me. I'm fresh out of material. I guess what I have been trying to say here this afternoon can be summed up by the old adage that "happiness is a journey, not a destination." Bringing joy and passion and optimism to your work is not what you get to do when you get to the top. It is HOW you get to the top. If I have had any success as a journalist since I was sitting down there where you are 30 years ago, it's because I found a way to enjoy the journey as much as the destination. I had almost as much fun as a cub reporter doing the overnight shift at UPI, as I did traveling with Secretary of State Baker, as I do now as a columnist. Oh yes, I have had my dull moments and bad seasons -- believe me, I have. But more often than not I found ways to learn from, and enjoy, some part of each job. You can't bet your whole life on some destination. You've got to make the journey work too. And that is why I leave you with some wit and wisdom attributed to Mark Twain: Always work like you don't need the money. Always fall in love like you've never been hurt. Always dance like nobody is watching. And always -- always -- live like it's heaven on earth.

Thank you.

Thomas L. Friedman won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, his third Pulitzer for The New York Times. He became the paper's foreign-affairs columnist in 1995. Previously, he served as chief economic correspondent in the Washington bureau and before that he was the chief White House correspondent. In 2005, Mr. Friedman was elected as a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board.

Mr. Friedman joined The Times in 1981 and was appointed Beirut bureau chief in 1982. In 1984 Mr. Friedman was transferred from Beirut to Jerusalem, where he served as Israel bureau chief until 1988. Mr. Friedman was awarded the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting (from Lebanon) and the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting (from Israel).

Mr. Friedman's latest book, "The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century," was released in April 2005. His book, "From Beirut to Jerusalem" (1989), won the National Book Award for non-fiction in 1989 and "The Lexus and the Olive Tree" (2000) won the 2000 Overseas Press Club award for best nonfiction book on foreign policy and has been published in 27 languages. Mr. Friedman also wrote "Longitudes and Attitudes: The World in the Age of Terrorism" (2002) and the text accompanying Micha Bar-Am's book, "Israel: A Photobiography."

Born in Minneapolis on July 20, 1953, Mr. Friedman received a B.A. degree in Mediterranean studies from Brandeis University in 1975. In 1978 he received a Master of Philosophy degree in Modern Middle East studies from Oxford. Mr. Friedman is married and has two daughters.

Manufacturing Muscle for India

2006-11-01T14:21:00.000+05:30

The Christian Science Monitor has a good article on India's growing manufacturing economy.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1101/p01s03-wosc.html

...."We have experienced trial and error," says Heung Soo Lheem, managing director of Hyundai's India operations.

For example, he sees a large number of malnourished workers, meaning that they are weaker than workers in other plants. Moreover, there are unusually high absentee rates, and not just due to illness. "People will travel two or three days by train to go to a marriage," says Mr. Lheem.

Yet the bottom line is good: "The efficiency is not as good as in Korea, but it still has competitiveness," says Lheem, noting India's lower wages. "Our Indian operation is very much successful at this point."

Then he adds pointedly: "Even more so than our Chinese operations."

Indeed, the factory at Sriperumbudur is a plot of perfect Korean efficiency transplanted to the scrub of the south Indian plains - right down to the kimchi in the executive cafeteria. The factory's 9,000 employees, contractors, and apprentices split three eight-hour shifts - the only plant in Hyundai's worldwide network to be online 24 hours a day. In addition, the workers handle different car models on the same assembly line, shifting seamlessly between Santros, Sonatas, and the other four models Hyundai makes here.....

...."With 1 billion people to feed, you cannot depend on services," says Sugato Sen, director of the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers in New Delhi.....

CRISIL HR Interview

2006-10-21T11:14:00.000+05:30

Pagalguy.com has interviewed the top HR team at CRISIL (which is now a S&P company). Definitely a place where MBA Finance folks would like to go.

Notable quote on the annual B-School marketing campaign:

What advice would you give a to B-school students if they wished to get into a credit rating company, in particular CRISIL?

..... Majority of MBA students spend their time preparing brochures, coming out with CDs and visiting us with all this for their placements. We get around 500 such CDs and brochures. Do you think we really have the time and energy to look through all of this? I would request them to stop wasting their time and money. When we go to their campus, we see that the quality of their thinking process has not been properly developed. This is because these students were busy marketing their B-schools over the two years, rather than developing their own thinking. What we are looking for, is someone of the sort who is, for example, interested in the steel sector and tells us how he has followed the whole steel sector right through his two years of MBA. An ideal person would know what is the global market of steel like, what are the global policies for steel, what happened in the Mittal and Arcelor deal, what is the impact of the global market and the global growth phenomenon, what is the impact of all this on the Indian market, does the Indian government have a favorable budget for the steel sector, what are the likely issues that are going to impact the steel sector, what are companies like Jindal and Tata steel doing for this, what are the skill sets required to be the top player in the steel market, and so on. B-school graduates could take up one sector and cover it from the global perspective down to the micro-level. It shows that the person has the width, the ability to look at micro-details and that is the kind of person we want. No B-school teaches you this and one needs take it up himself and understand it well.

A lot of people tell me that they don’t get time to read many books in B-school because of their rigorous schedules. At best, they say that they have read Philip Kotler, but that’s not good enough. Your reading should be more plural and diverse involving topics from domain areas, non-domain areas, history and more. It is your ability to make a big picture and connect to it because MBA or post graduation diplomas are basically to see how well you can apply theory to practice.

Our problems with B-school graduates are firstly, that they don’t read well enough, they don’t have the time because most of the time they are doing a whole host of things which actually are not required. Secondly, when they come after completing their two years at B-schools, again they stop reading altogether. A good MBA is good enough for the next six months in terms of understanding, but after that one needs to keep educating oneself, otherwise we will become outdated. One should not read for getting promoted or any other advancement, but you read to rehabilitate yourself. The easiest part of an MBA is getting a job, but the tougher part is retaining it, even tougher is building upon it and building a brand. The organization should be able to mention five things for which an employee stands for and those qualities make him stand apart for the rest.

Find the complete interview here:
http://www.pagalguy.com/index.php?categoryid=68&p2_articleid=518&p2_page=1

Business Today rankings dissected

2006-10-21T11:05:00.000+05:30

Rashmi Bansal at JAM magazine has done a splendid review of Business Today AC Nielsen ranking survey:

http://www.jammag.com/careers/n/showart.php?art_id=193 (Posted on Jul 19th, 2006)

Its never too late to blog on B-School rankings! :-)

Research @ McKinsey

2006-10-20T16:40:00.000+05:30

The McKinsey website has some good stuff on Reforms of Financial Markets in India and China.

Multimedia Presentation on India

Another one on China

Regular readers of The Ringside will find the report "The Emerging Global Market" very interesting. You can also download a full 21 minute mp3 file of the article.

Also check out the McKinsey Global Institute and The McKinsey Quarterly

WEF Global Competitiveness Report 2006-2007

2006-09-27T09:17:00.000+05:30

Find the complete report here (with lists in PDF/Excel):

http://www.weforum.org/en/initiatives/gcp/Global%20Competitiveness%20Report/

Related article in The Indian Express:
"Scoring high on innovation, India ahead of China in competitiveness ranking"
http://www.indianexpress.com/story/13502.html

Vodafone to raise stake in Bharti

2006-07-17T14:04:00.000+05:30

Vodafone reinforces its prescence in India ...

Vodafone to raise stake in Bharti
Arnab Mallick / Kharagpur July 17, 2006

Expects share of emerging market in the firm’s global business to double to 30%.

UK-based Vodafone Group Plc, the world’s largest mobile service provider, plans to increase its equity stake in Bharti Tele-Ventures, the Delhi-based telecom company in which it picked up a shade over 10 per cent equity in October last year.

Vodafone sees India as a major market and future growth driver.

Arun Sarin, chief executive officer (CEO), Vodafone Group Plc, said, “We are open to the idea. Let us see...even if we are willing to buy shares, someone else should also be willing to sell.”

Vodafone has made a total investment of Rs 6,700 crore to acquire around 10 per cent stake in Bharti, including the acquisition of shares held by Warburg Pincus. With the final sale of its stake, Warburg Pincus completely exited its position in Bharti Tele-Ventures.

Speaking on the possibility of picking up stake in any other Indian telecom company, Sarin said, “We do not have plans of picking up stake in any other Indian telecom company. Once we are married to a company, we stay with it.”

According to the CEO of the $75 billion group, registering an annual growth of around 5-6 per cent, the share of the emerging market in their global business was likely to double within the next five years.

“Currently, the share of emerging market in our global business is around 15 per cent. In the next five years, it is likely to become 30 per cent and India will be play a major role in it,” he added.

Meanwhile, the company has picked up stake in companies based in South Africa, Czech Republic among others. It also holds a three per cent stake in China Mobile.

Sarin further added, “Our aim is to significantly increase our coverage within the next few years in India. That would require a huge amount of capital.”

According to him, the aim is to increase the coverage from 40 per cent of the customer base to 80 per cent.

War for talent in Indian IT goes on

2006-07-13T17:32:00.000+05:30

Another good article;

War for talent in Indian IT goes on

By INDRAJIT BASUUPI Correspondent

CALCUTTA, India, July 11 (UPI) -- The increasing global IT spending and the trend towards outsourcing may have triggered ambitious expansion plans of big local as well as multinational IT companies in India, but their enormous hiring plans are also making it harder for smaller Indian IT companies to retain employees, fueling a full-fledged war for talent.

Although big local IT companies like Infosys Technologies and Tata Consultancy Services say that life is still the usual for them, smaller and mid-sized IT services companies claim that in their quest for talent, the IT biggies have started using the smaller home-grown tech firms as hunting grounds for new employees, which is impacting the future stability of many.

"The hiring plans of companies like IBM and even the local IT services companies are emerging as issues in the local IT sector," said a human resource official from Cognizant Technology Solutions, "and it is not a secret that big companies often target the smaller companies as hunting ground." The official, who requested anonymity, was quick to add though that Cognizant sees "few encroachments compared to smaller IT firms and is geared to meet such
challenges."
Nasdaq-listed Cognizant is a U.S.-headquartered tech firm with major operation and almost three-quarters of its global 28,000 employees in India. Although at $1 billion revenues Cognizant cannot be considered small even by global standards, high attrition rate, which has almost become symptomatic of the Indian IT sector, is emerging to be an area of concern for this company too that spends about 3 percent of its revenues on new hires and has plans to hike up its employee count to 35,000 by the end of this year.

But if Cognizant's 25 percent increase in employee count over the next few months looks impressive, the hiring plans in India of the other MNC IT services are clearly ambitious. Following the recently announced mega $6 billion investment plans in the country, IBM's headcount for instance is expected to go past 50,000 from the current 38,000 over the next 12 to 15 months while Accenture too is targeting an equally impressive employee base (from 20,000 in India to 50,000 in South East Asia) by 2009. Similarly Electronic Data System is
slated to employ 28,000 heads by 2008 while Cap Gemini has announced that it will increase its headcount from 2500 to 10,000 in the next few years.

As for local IT services companies, Infosys, Wipro, Satyam and TCS alone increased their headcount by 56,000 in 2005 and plans to add an equal number this year. According to NASSCOM, the local IT industry lobby, the technology services segment will hike employee count to 390,000 in 2006 and has a demand for 850,000 professionals and 1.4 million back office professionals by year 2010.

"Paucity of talent is causing IT companies in India to use fair and foul means to grab the best-of-best knowledge workers," said NASSCOM in a statement, which added, "Driven by their ambitious plans big IT companies in India are not only scouring the horizon for industry-ready IT professionals that have the necessary skills but in their quest for talent, these companies are also willing to battle with competitors to have and hold these people."

"Compared to a few years back the market for talent is much more buoyant today," said Mohan Das Pai, director, Infosys, who has recently taken over the company's human resources functions, "and it has become difficult to hold on to people if you cannot pay them well or have the right kind of work for them."

"If a small company cannot grow in line with the maturity or experience of its people, then these days, such companies not only face pressures of increasing employee costs but also retention problems," Pai said adding that top Indian IT companies have not started faced such problems yet.

For Azim Premji, founder and the de facto CEO of Wipro, one of India's top five IT companies, holding on to talent is clearly getting tough. "Attrition rate has been bothering us," Premji said. "Our current attrition rate is 12 percent but we would like that to be lower."

Nevertheless, the aggressive hiring policies of the handful of top companies are fast turning into a crisis situation for the hundreds of small IT companies, many of which are scaling up their headcount too although without attracting headlines. "The mercenary attitude shown by tech professionals has led to low stability of workforce," said Tarun Hukku, the chief recruitment officer of Microland -- a local IT outfit -- in an interview to the media.

But the problem is there's no near term solution. "The crux of India's talent crunch lies in the country's poor educational infrastructure -- like engineering and technical colleges -- and such problems cannot be solved in just a few years," says Pai.

This is why he reckons that even as the country's education system churns out 3 million graduates and 400,000 engineers every year, the IT industry may have to spend up to $2.6 billion in training an additional one million professionals over the next three years to make them employable in the industry.

The IT Recruiting Juggernaut rolls on ....

2006-06-30T11:38:00.000+05:30

The mega plans that TCS and Infosys have formed begs the question: is the once seemingly limitless pool of Indian manpower draining too fast? According to this article the big four will hire more than 80,000 this year alone. Infosys and TCS will add numbers equal to 50% of their current workforce. Worth noting however, is that a significant number will be hired outside India.

IT employees rule the roost
B G Shirsat in Mumbai

June 28, 2006 08:18 IST

Infosys plans to hire 25,000 employees across geographies for which it has set aside Rs 1,600 crore (Rs 16 billion) to invest in training and infrastructure for FY07.

TCS plans to add 30,500 during FY07 while Satyam expects to hire 12,000 and Wipro might lap up over 15,000 engineers.

The expansion in manpower would take the total strength of the IT sector to around 2.29 million in the current fiscal from around 1.29 million now. NASCOM estimates the manpower strength of the total IT industry to touch 4.3 million by 2009-10.

The IT and ITeS sector is estimated to spend close to $2.6 billion over the next three years in training people for this industry. Also Indian IT companies have plans to invest in facilities in SEZs and tier III cities.

Infosys has plans to increase its office space by 50 per cent -- creating 5.3 million square feet of Grade A office space that can seat around 25,000 persons.

It already has 10 million sq ft office space for 52,715 employees. It will hire 1,000 people in China in FY07 and is building capacity for the 5000 people it plans to hire there over the next five years.

TCS expects to add 15,000, about half of its projected 30,500 hires, from campuses. At the beginning of FY06, it had planned to add 10,000-odd employees to its rolls. It ended up adding more than double � 21,140 to be precise.

TCS currently has 66,480 employees. The company has signed an MoU with the Maharashtra government to acquire 50 acres of land to develop a state-of-the-art development facility in Hinjewadi Phase III in Pune, a part of an MIDC-promoted Special Economic Zone.

TCS is expected to invest up to Rs 500 crore (Rs 5 billion) in the facility to create a capacity of 5,000 seats. Infosys has outlined nearly $400 million (Rs 1,600 crore) for expansion in FY07. Wipro is spending Rs 1,300 crore (Rs 13 billion) while Satyam has planned to spend Rs 400 crore (Rs 4 billion) in 2006-07.

And why not? The four frontline IT companies are flush with funds with total reserves of Rs 23,000 crore (Rs 230 billion) as on March 31, 2006.

They have Rs 7,400 crore (Rs 74 billion) worth cash in hand for capital expenditure program with Infosys Technologies (Rs 3,279 crore -- Rs 32.70 billion), Satyam (3,053 crore -- Rs 20353 billion) and Wipro (Rs 886 crore (Rs 8.86 billion) are high on the cash list. These companies have spent Rs 4,000 crore (Rs 40 billion) on fixed assets over the last two years.

TCS aims to become $10 billion firm by 2010

2006-06-30T11:22:00.000+05:30

TCS has publicly announced its intention to reach the magic $10 Billion mark by 2010;

http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/006200606292069.htm

TCS aims to become $10 billion firm by 2010

Mumbai, June. 29 (PTI): Country's top software exporter Tata Consultancy Services expects a five-fold increase in its revenues over the next four years to touch USD 10 billion in 2010. The company has earmarked a capital expenditure to the tune of Rs 1,300 crores for the current fiscal and it will add around 30,000 employees during the year.

Addressing the Annual General Meeting of the company, Tata group chairman Ratan Tata said, "We aim to become among the top ten (IT companies) by 2010 with revenues touching USD 10 billion over the next four years. The company will leverage the booming IT industry which is witnessing rapid growth during these years."

During the last fiscal, TCS revenues stood over USD two billions.

As part of expansion programmes, TCS would spend Rs 1,000 crores towards real estate development, which includes setting up of campuses in various parts across the country.
About Rs 300 crores would go for technological expansions, he said.

TCS, Tata said, would continue to grow around 28-30 per cent during the year, slightly above the growth rate, predicted by the industry body, NASSCOM.

About the merger of acquired entities into the company, Tata said, it was not necessary to merge all those entities with TCS.

"As subsidiaries, we think, those (acquired entities) can register a better growth. So it's not necessary to merge these firms with TCS," he said, adding 37 out of 50 subsidiaries of TCS were making profits.

Do refer to my previous blog on this subject;
http://theringside.blogspot.com/2006/05/race-to-10-billion.html

"The MBA Caste System"

2006-06-28T16:36:00.000+05:30

Alumni and B-Schools;

http://www.rediff.com/getahead/2004/oct/25ga-rashmi.htm

The MBA Caste System

By Rashmi Bansal (editor or JAM)

...

So what is it that sets the crème de la crème apart? Resources, faculty, infrastructure? That's just part of the story. By that reckoning, university departments like FMS and Bajaj should have been knocked off their pedestal a long time ago by newer entrants with deeper pockets. But 'pedigree', as the dictionary defines it, is a 'line of ancestors'. In the case of management education, ancestry has one simple definition -- the alumni.

The older institutes boast of alumni who joined the corporate world two-three decades ago and are at -- or very near -- the top today. The alumni effect is two-fold. At the obvious level, the companies they run ensure the alma mater is always on the recruitment radar. But, at a subtler level, alumni achievements rub off on the mother brand, and hence on the current crop of students.

In a sense, the alumni community IS the brand because they are the finished products, so to speak, of the MBA manufacturing process. And they form the one unique component in the matrix that cannot be duplicated by more recent institutes. That, in a nutshell, is the competitive advantage enjoyed by pedigree institutes which -- in the immediate future -- will remain unbeatable.

...

The Economist: Can India Fly?

2006-06-04T15:44:00.000+05:30

The latest issue o f The Economist (June 03, 2006) has India on the cover ...

Not all articles are available online, but you can find one here:
http://www.economist.com/surveys/displaystory.cfm?story_id=6969740

India Today College Rankings

2006-06-04T15:30:00.000+05:30

India Today has come out with its annual colleges survey. They have listed out top 10 or 10 institutes each in Arts, Commerce, Science, Engineering, Law and Medicine. Unlike previous years, B-Schools rankings have not been published alongside. I expect the same to be given in the next Business Today issue that is to come out any time now.

The market research agency behind this is AC Nielsen ORG MARG. They have described their methodology is some detail, but I am yet to analyze it.

The top colleges for each field are:

St Xavier's College, Mumbai (Arts)
SRCC, Delhi (Commerce)
Loyola College, Chennai (Science)
IIT Delhi (Engineering)
NLSIU, Bangalore (Law)
AIIMS, Delhi (Medicine)

Again, I have not looked thru the report in detail, but the abscence of BITS Pilani in the engineering Top 20 was too glaring to miss.

PS: The entire issue looks like a multi page advertorial. Please people, bunch all those adverts into a separate handbook next time. From where do these institutes get the cash to place such ads anyways?

2006-05-22T09:29:00.000+05:30

A new strategic challenge has emerged for the Indian IT industry. From Financial Times;

Drought forecast for India's technology
reservoir

By KHOZEM MERCHANT
Published: May 4 2006 03:00 Last updated: May 4 2006 03:00

The supply of engineering graduates in Bangalore is struggling to keep up with demand. So much so, it is said, that one influential software company is considering setting up its own university. No prize for guessing which employer, even if the tale is, for now, flattering rumour. Infosys Technologies already runs a "leadership" training centre in Mysore, which is equipped to train 4,500 graduate recruits and 500 additional "future leaders" at any given moment. The issue of the supply of talent hung over this month's announcements of annual results from Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Wipro, which together account for a third of the revenues of India's booming IT industry.

All revealed another year of scorching growth, adding 30-35 customers each quarter. But when talk turned to sustainability, the words "human capital" loomed.
This trio of IT giants recruited more than 60,000 staff last year, mostly from Indian colleges. TCS says it will add 30,000 this year, and Infosys 25,000.

But where will they find the recruits? India's six distinguished institutes of technologies may be admired worldwide but only a fraction of graduates find leadership roles, the rest becoming foot-soldiers remotely managing the technology infrastructure of, say, a UK utility from Bangalore.
India may produce 2.5m graduates a year, but only 350,000 are in suitable engineering or IT-related jobs. Moreover, a recent report by consultants McKinsey and the IT industry group Nasscom, found that only a quarter of engineering graduates were armed with the appropriate skills demanded by software companies. India was lagging behind rival employment markets such as Malaysia and Hungary.

While India's IT industry employs about 1m people, some 2.3m IT workers will be required by 2010 if the current growth rate continues. Supply shortages could lead to a shortfall of 500,000 - a gap that will threaten India's global lead in the technology service market.

S Padmanabhan, head of human resources at TCS, which last year received 300,000 graduate-level applications for a job at Asia's largest software services company, is in no doubt about the importance of his task: "Human resources is the most strategic issue facing the technology sector," he says.

Similarly, T V Mohandas Pai, who holds the same role at Infosys, says: "The decade ahead will be one of unmatched focus on human resources. The challenge is immense."

So what are the two most important human resource executives in India doing to support their companies' growth?

The TCS chief talks of "widening the pool", which in practice means looking beyond the principal colleges such as the blue-chip Indian Institute of Technologies (IIT), as well as recruiting from second-tier cities such as Indore and Bhopal.

He admits however that "looking wider and deeper" is not without its problems. First there is a large gap in quality between the faculties at the IIT and the more run-of-the-mill engineering colleges. The standard of teaching facilities also varies greatly.

The upshot for TCS is increasing contribution to the less good colleges. The aim is to "make the entry level experience a homogeneous one," says Mr Padmanabhan. TCS not only requires a high standard of applicant, but it needs all of them to be at the same level of attainment. That matters when you are recruiting on the scale of TCS - anything else means more time and money for ironing out problems with accepted applicants.

"The variations are wide," he says. "Within the top 10 per cent the standard is consistent. But the rest requires greater investment, notably in soft skills such as sales and communications." TCS does not confine its recruitment to India either - 6.5 per cent of its staff is non-Indian. It has centres in China, Hungary, Uruguay and North America - about 12 per cent of the 30,000 recruits in the year ahead will be from outside India.

Infosys also employs this strategy. In June, 100 graduates taken from US arts and engineering colleges will arrive at Infosys's Bangalore campus for a year-long training programme, with another 200 from the US joining the programme in the coming months.

The company has already trained 100 Chinese students - mostly to build bilateral ties - and a couple of hundred from Mauritius. It is another bold move for an organisation regarded as having the most sophisticated training infrastructure in India. "They have simply accepted that the only way to [manage attrition and growth] is to train on scale and quality," says an external Infosys director.

Mr Pai's recent appointment as head of human resources is a measure of how seriously Infosys takes the issue of finding talent.

He saw his star rise as finance director when he was the architect of Infosys's listing on Nasdaq, the US exchange - the first by an Indian IT company.

Going abroad will, however, raise the company's recruitment costs. For example, Infosys spends $5,000 to train a graduate recruit over a 14-week programme. Training an overseas recruit has run up bills 3-4 times greater because most enter the company at a higher base level. Infosys trains overseas graduates in India because training in their home territories takes more time and is costlier. It seems it is also easier to impart "Infosys values" in Bangalore, India, rather than in Buffalo, New York.

Two years ago, Infosys had $1bn in sales and 25,000 employees. This year it has already broken through $2bn in sales with 52,700 staff and it is on track for sales of $2.8bn with an expansion of its workforce to 77,000.

So will it set up a university? There's no official word, though here might be a clue: frustration with the lack and expense of hotel rooms in Bangalore have already led it to build a hotel on its campus.
During the dot-com boom, it was not unusual to see multiple full-page advertisements by IT Training companies, that too in leading national papers. NIIT and Aptech are two best known firms, while some like Zap folded up even before students could complete the courses they had paid for. This was the time when BE/BTech was not a commoditized qualification like it has become.

In the post-2001 period, this industry collapased as the job market for freshers soured. More importantly, the number of engineering colleges in the India exploded, giving students a much more formal and recognised qualification. Obtaining a seat in BE/BTech degrees is not difficult anymore for even the average student, even though gaining admission into the top colleges has never been tougher.

At the way things are going, IT companies have no choice but to look at other courses in India - B.Sc and BCA and other three year courses for entry level hires. MCA is already an established professional qualification. Trouble is while BCA and B.Sc (CS/IT/Elect) students might get sufficient skills as part of the curriculum, BComs and other BSc.s are not employable. Lets see if training companies can capitalize this opportunity.

2006-05-16T11:48:00.000+05:30

An interesting study on the surveys;

Quality in Management Education - A Meta-Analysis of Recent B-School Surveys
By Arnab Kumar Laha
Download the PDF at: http://www.iimahd.ernet.in/download.php?downloadid=263

Conclusion;

In this paper we have analysed the methodology of some of the recent B-School surveys. We found several discrepancies in the methodology likeinconsistencies in the parameters and their weights used for measuring quality of management education, non-participation of a large number of managementinstitutes, use of non-validated data and a summative scale for ranking and categorization purpose.

The role of AICTE is vital for deciding on theparameters to be used for measuring quality of management education,ensuring participation of the management institutes and validation of the dataprovided by them.Instead of using a summative scale, which reducesmultivariate data into univariate data, it is recommended that multivariatestatistical procedures like cluster analysis be used to determine the categoriesof the different institutes. Instead of deciding on the number of categoriesarbitrarily, it is appropriate that the data itself dictates the number of categories present. We have shown the use of Beale's criterion in the context of K-meanscluster analysis for this purpose.The use of ranking is not recommendedbecause of large variation witnessed in the different surveys.

A properly conducted B-school survey will immensely benefit the stakeholdersof management education like recruiters, students, guardians, etc, in choosingthe "right" B-schools.

Rankings cometh!

2006-05-15T10:09:00.000+05:30

Its that time of the year again.

Hundreds of thousands of young Indians will be joining universities in the next two months. Some are fresh from school, others are pursuing masters or research. India being a large and diverse country, there is a general lack of information among both students and parents. Word of mouth advice is still important, but given the proliferation of private institutes and aggressive advertising students and parents look towards Rankings to provide an impartial and fair view.

It is a running argument that rankings are bogus and dont reflect the true realities. In India rankings are yet to mature, hence every media house wants to jump onto it with a view to the future.... one day afterall some rankings will emerge as the authority, much like USNews and Business Week rankings are seen in the US.

There are three ranking systems available;

Annual surveys by various magazines such as Outlook and India Today
Advice by various CAT coaching centres
Advice by consulting firms such as Mercer and Hewitt

1. Same time last year I made a list of 'reputed' B-School surveys by media houses:

Business India (MaRS)
Business Today (AC Nielson)
Business World (Cosmode)
Outlook (C-FORE)
All India Management Association (IMRB)

The first influential rankings to be published is the annual India Today/Business Today survey, which I expect to come out next month. Note that the publications routinely change their research agencies. So dont be surprised if AC Nielsen rankings come out in a different vehicle this year. The other B-School rankings follow on till November (the CAT month).

2. Coaching centres thru their large franchise network are a signficant influence on MBA aspirants. Students spend a considerable time at the institutes interacting with the faculty there, so its natural for them to have influence over students.

Since these institutes dont conduct their own research, their advice is based on a composite score derived from the surveys listed above.

CareerForum (http://www.cflogic.com/)
IMS (http://www.imsindia.com/)
Career Launcher (http://www.careerlauncher.com/)

3. While students can rely a lot more on media, word of mouth, and actual visits to shape their opinion, corporates recruiters are often guided by the influence of colleagues who are alumni of their various colleges. Rankings by BT, BW have their influence too. However, when they need professional opinion they can approach HR consulting firms like Hewitt and Mercer.

The Harvard Mafia

2006-05-13T13:30:00.000+05:30

The role that alumni play in a B-School's progress is well known in the MBA community. Students are cognizant of the jobs that alumni bring to campus, and to the alumni community at large. Interestingly, Harvard alumni has been acknolwedged for their excellent networking, and are colloquially known as the "Harvard Mafia".

Conflict of Interest

2006-05-12T20:29:00.000+05:30

In my MBA final year viva, the panel was led by an industry veteran, a 1974 passout of UBS. The gentleman was into marketing of industrial inputs.

During the course of my viva, I was asked to identify the "conflict of interest" that occurs between the vendor of a product or service and the customer in a B2B or industrial scenario. Mercifully after a little beating around the bush I answered the question to his satisfaction.

The conflict of interest arises due to the customers ever increasing expectations from the service provider. Modern managers realise the importance of delighting the customer, but how do you ever satisfy a customer who keeps raising the bar higher? Retaining an existing client is much more crucial than finiding a new one, we are told. But dealing with a purchaser/buyer whos primary motive is push down his costs (naturally) can be a tricky situation. If things get nasty every opportunity might be used to deride your project team's work, hoping to reduce the quotation of your firm's next bid with company.

So whats the solution? It lies in laying down the deliverables of your project on paper before the work starts, nomatter how much time and heated discussion in needs. In the end the parties should have an understanding that the vendor's performance would be based on how well he has fullfilled those deliverables and none other.

"The Infosys Bubble"

2006-05-12T16:17:00.000+05:30

I just came across this though provoking blog post "The Infosys Bubble". Quoting;
Infosys needed 52,000 employees to generate a revenue of approximately US$2 Billion, that averages to US$40,000 per employee. Assuming perfect linearity,
they will need another 25,000 employees to add the next billion.

....

Have a great silver jubilee, Infosys, because looking forward, it does not look too exciting. Let me end with a quote by Oscaar Wilde, “Everything popular is wrong”.

Hmm, if the author's premise holds, then to be a USD 10 Billion dollar company Infosys will have to grow to a strength of 250,000 (woah!). But then Accenture is making more than that already with less than 150,000 employees, so what exactly is Accenture doing differently? The answer would tell us where Infosys (and TCS and Wipro for that matter) might be heading. Either that or Srikant's premise better not be sound.

"The Race to $10 Billion"

2006-05-12T15:57:00.000+05:30

When I saw the cover of the latest Business Today (May 21, 2006) screaming "The Race to $10 Billion", I picked it up from the newstand rightaway.

The Business Today (BT) cover story stacks up the big three against each other in their growth to USD 10 Billion in revenues. BT predicts that the three can reach this milestone by 2010, or even sooner. But that’s saying something, because the combined revenue of Indian IT industry is expected to be USD 60 Billion in 2010, per NASSCOM-McKinsey assessment. This means that these three companies – Infosys, TCS and Wipro would account for around 50% of the revenue all by themselves!

TCS stands out for its ability to win big deals, and presence in multiple verticals. Infosys has a mega brand and superb marketing, great margins but lacks capability in a number of verticals. Wipro scores high on innovation and the knack for inorganic growth.

Methodology. The three firms were rated on a ten point scale on ten parameters by BT. Weights were assigned to each factor based on industry expert advice. A weighted average revealed the composite ranking.

The ten parameters are:

Financial Performance
Portfolio of offerings
Ability to attract and retain talent
Execution abilities
Quality of clients
Scalability
Vision
M&A Ability
Innovation
Systems and Processes

Result. Based on the total score BT concludes that TCS (9.29) is most likely to reach the target first, followed closely by Infosys (9.25). Wipro (9.085) comes in third.

2006-05-11T17:42:00.000+05:30

The comparison of India's Big Three IT powerhouses namely TCS, Infosys and Wipro Technologies is something that always engages me. Theres a big cover story in the latest Business Today on this.... before I review that, here are a couple of older pieces;

"Indian IT sector: Who's the best?" (August 30, 2004)
http://www.rediff.com/money/2004/aug/30perfin1.htm

The report succintly lists out differences between the three majors with the help of numbers (uh oh) ;-) .
"The billion-dollar comparison" (June 28, 2004)
http://ia.rediff.com/money/2004/jun/28bill.htm

A significant portion of the article explains the effect of fixed priced contracts on TCS margins.

Note that both articles a bit dated.

First post

2006-05-11T15:14:00.000+05:30

Hello World!