The pygmy effect

Indian companies by global standards are small in size.... in terms of turnover, balance sheet and scale of operations. This has roots in history to the planned experiment with socialism, the licence raj which curtailed growth in its own way, the romantic notion of self sufficiency through small scale industries, the fabled piece of legislation the Monopolies Restrictive Trade Practices Act. But these would be immediate identifiable causes, slightly offbeat would be the late arrival of industrialization to India but during the rule under colonialism which anyways had perverse intentions to not let Indian companies grow large. I also think of two reasons why probably Indian entities never grew too big...

1. Lack of capital formation : India was and is still a rural driven agrarian economy. In such cases capital formation is closely linked to the productivity of the land, which in Indias case is led by the monsoons. Monsoon failure meant subsistence. Also the water tight compartments of castes around professions meant that the rich trading community and the artisan community were different, so while India gave birth to financing systems like Hundis, chit funds and micro entreprenuership, modern notions of shared ownership did not take off. Even when the modern company form took root , we had the relic which a lot of people wouldnt have heard of called the controller of capital issues.... so lack of capital meant, companies remained small...... financing expansion through internal accruals which anyways were suppressed to pay lower tax or thorough bank debt which came at phenomenal costs. Add the Indian aversion to debt and its a potent cocktail of capital deficiency which would kill large scale global ambitions.

2. The 200 cr barrier - The Indian entrepreneur is hands on (I have great respect for them - more about it in a later post) and likes to be in control. So usually the organization is an extension of his/her personality. Also since most Indian promoters never diversify their personal balance sheets from that of the company, maintaining control becomes essential to ensure safety of personal wealth and family standard of living (again a perverse tax incentive means a posh bungalow, a swanky super car and the summer getaway are all financed by the company as a perk!!). A very easy way of exercising control is through filling up the company with family members - bottomline your ability to procreate is the barrier to growth and since blood is thicker than water, professionals never succeed in such companies, so every small decision ends up with papaji/lalaji/chairman/ founder or whoever is the head.....growth gets squeezed. I usually ask a question to ascertain if this is a problem with companies when i first start working with them - do you know which debtors you wrote off last year? if the answer is names of debtors i have an issue, if the answer is something like we had a review / we have a policy - then yes, systems have taken over.... and why do i call it the 200 cr barrier - most Indian companies cant seem to get out of this vicious cycle and get stuck around that number - if you broke through that, then according to me you have built a middle management which runs the company.....All you then need is a visionary!!!

If Indian companies have to dominate the world stage, grow large and enhance their reach globally, I think somewhere they will need to address these 2 issues.

(and before you start commenting - I know there are well run professional companies in India - L&T et al, but if you remove the family conglomerates, I can count such companies with ease....)

Miss you....

You shall see the world through my eyes as I saw it through yours long ago….

There is no self made man, every single instance shapes him… you shaped 18 years of it.

You always knew more than I did but never were afraid to learn from me.

You never let me win the game of chess or play those spinning cricket balls just because I was a bad loser, but you taught me to win.

You never were happy when I came second but were the proudest man in the room when I stood eighth when I was eighteen.

You had less then than what you gave us but more happy when our faces lit up with smile.

You always knew where I hid but never found me at once.

I was scared of your temper but saw it only once and that changed my character forever. I saw when you hurt at my mistakes but was hurt more to never do it.

I learnt to dream, push harder, aim higher but never once forgot the right way so that I would lose sleep

You pushed me harder; to challenge myself but to trust my abilities… risk what is mine, to not fear the unknown. To dream higher but never from a weak foundation

My love for water, the outdoors, the stock market and books I know where I got from….

My love for family, my respect for elders but the courage to call a spade a spade, my empathy for those in need – values I learnt at home…

I was a friend before I realized I was a son and when I realized I was a son I lost a friend, this is to my father, who left us 10 years ago, to what I hope is a better place, since with even those small things missing, it was still heaven here…

In the land of the color challenged...

when we were small kids we used to play this game of colors.... one person was out of the group, and would name a color and people who had that color could walk over to the other side, more like a free passage, those who didn't would then try to reach the other side without getting caught, if you did then you are out..... I used to consistently get out....becoz... now i know, i didn't know what color was being referred to....

move forward by a few years, I get stumped when people call out colors and say things like ecru or beige or algae green.... I feel lost.... for some reason I am color challenged... not color blind mind you, just challenged and i suspect its more in being able to name them.... for me its the primary colors and maybe some standard other colors and then its light or dark..... i cant identify parrot green vs. algae green or brown vs. beige. ecru or milky white to curd white or elephant grey vs ash grey or jet black vs. clear black ( i don't even know they exist, so how can i recognise them?)....

I am not color blind mind you, I am what you can call color ignorant :)

So the next time you meet someone who talks about colours in two shades, light or dark, and
is slightly confused with any other color than blue.... you have met me or one of my kind.... please show some kindness and talk our language...

save me from the serial killers....

There has been an explosion of daily sitcoms in Indian television, family fights, saas-bahu serials, corporate wars but mainly woman characters, adultery - every possible theme running across years beams into households captivating the imagination of the women viewers and the men too (although the latter will not be caught dead discussing about it!!!) - but give me a break.... I come home tired wanting to watch something which can be fun, informative (yeah even after 10-12 hours of just business related thinking at work, I still watch CNBC and NDTV profit, so sue me!!) but the TV is taken over at 8:30 and till 10 PM , mostly the time I would have reached home or just before dinner am subject to this torture........

Don't mistake me, its not that I have anything against these, each has his/ her own poison, but this is literally my poison!!!! I cant see wailing women, overacting, conniving acting as though they will bring the world down and pseudo commentaries about what is happening in our society thru this nonsense.....

aarrrggghhh the family that dines together stays together they say...... if this nonsense doesn't end soon, either my dinner time will be very late in the night or the family doesn't dine together.....

Ektaaa kappooor (or whatever her the latest form of name her spelling has morphed into) and all your ilk , I curse you solitary confinement with 1500 days of continuous crap you are dishing out....

Some questions...

I kind of like the philosophy Hinduism propounds ( don't ask me what it is, there are just too many, so pick up something that suits you!!!) - not that I am religious - am more as someone once told me, karmic than dharmic - but I find it interesting that a single religion can allow thoughts where you can consider yourself one with God ( Advaitha - literally meaning 'not double'), dwaitha (literally meaning - two different ) and vishistadvaitha ( a form of advaitha - where thought goes that while in human form humans and God are different, once you reach God, you become same) - most religions I have basic knowledge of do not allow such wide spectrum of thoughts ( mind you : I am probably a novice in this region , so please feel free to correct me , will be really glad to learn more here). But then what gets my goat and given the fact that these thoughts have been with us for maybe 1500 years, why did we treat a section of our society so badly? I am a Brahmin, so while I can understand the power that might have resided in the caste due to knowledge, what I fail to understand is when we could be so tolerant to religious thoughts ( remember : belief based persecution is what is most prevalent in human history) , how is it that we failed to uplift the sections of society we left behind?

Even assuming there was no higher intention, someone should have moved these sections just for the power...why did it not happen at all? Interestingly, as a caste, while maybe Brahmins excelled in knowledge and maybe that allowed them to adapt to changing conditions sooner, my guess would be that most Brahmins would be the working middle class even today...so it was not money that drove the so called 'upper caste' to this...

I am all for affirmative action, maybe even reservation, maybe priority over natural resources as our beloved 'toothless' prime minister wants us to believe... but correcting a mistake does not mean you make the same mistake...

Update on BIAL

I had an earlier post on BIAL and had noted how somehow the airport had not lived upto the expectations of many. Now that I have made a few more trips, I am beginning to see the airport come into its own... I read somewhere them claiming that a passenger will alight and be out in 20 mins... i actually timed it yesterday and i was out in 12... it helped that we used the aerobridge and and being a platinum on Jet my luggage gets priority, but yes it was impressive... in 20 Min's I was out of the airport, into a taxi and halfway to the trumpet changeover....

The toilets issue still remains, not sure what they can do about it, the check in counters is a mystery to me.... They seem to have ~65 (or was it ~50) counters, but I end up spending more time in a queue than the old airport, not sure what is happening here.... Traditional queuing theory suggests that single queues with multiple counters are more effective than multiple queues, and that has been put into practice here, but still it doesn't seem to work.... hmm I need to look at this tomorrow when I travel again..

The seating area is woefully short I think, we Indians are not too used to forming a single file line , usually 2 lines get formed, and close to the boarding counters, there is a vague formation of chairs obstructing the line formation...... somewhere I think the commercial area to seating area is sub optimal.... The number of options to eat is large, but the work flow is not well thought out of, for E.g : people collect their coffee etc outside the cafe near Gate 1 and that impacts the boarding at Gate 1 , near gate 3 there is this vague obstruction of a small bill board which impacts the movement of people ( its bang in the middle of no where!!!)

And dudes - where are the charging points for laptops ?

But bottomline, the airport seems to be improving in leaps and bounds every time I travel, hopefully, we will have one to boast of....

Bengaluru International Airport Limited - BIAL - a shame

I have traveled from the BIAL twice now and I am so thoroughly disappointed with what is the result of a >15 year wait, i think the citizens of bangalore have been cheated by government apathy, profiteering private enterprise who give a damn to the customers comfort.....here are my observations....

Good ones first :

1. The road with all the media outcry is looking good.... there is still some work left in patches but it is in place. I live in south bangalore and its about 63 kms from where I live, so it seems like a mini picnic - it took me an hour to travel this distance, not in peak traffic ofcourse, that might take sometime more
2. The look is that of a international airport.... suvarnabhumi, brussels , dubai - they look swank- this with the glass and open light looks so
3. Unlike the old HAL airport, there is some space here.... but my concern is has someone thought of future - why didnt we think of a multi level parking in one shot?
   
4. The aerobridges look cool
   

Now the cribs :

1. They have very few toilets and hello , the whole damn place is water logged.... this is a new structure damn it, why cant we have a few more toilets......
   
2. Who the hell is globe ground ? - BIAL says lufthansa has a stake and they are global partners who will provide international level ground handling - my foot - my flight landed at 12:30 yesterday night - after been delayed by an hour and then we waited for 20 mins in the plane since globe ground guys could not align the step ladder with the plane door - it took them 6 attempts. 4 guys were just pulling it back and trying to align it..... hello whatever happened to those tractors or vans which used to pull these around. Then we got down to find 2 buses for a plane full of people. Kingfisher, with its plush couches in buses has set the bar too high and here the same people were forced to pack people in as sardines. And then the heights they brought in Tempo travellers..... and then the driver gets confused and drops us off at a gate which is locked.....so here we have 4 elderly people, a lady with a bawling baby and another couple with 2 sleepy kids with other weary business travelers who probably have clocked a 18 hour day trying to catch someones attention to get the door opened.... and then trudge for 100 mts to sneak into another door... Look at what has happened - since one of the service providers messed up kingfisher and BIAL both ended up with a bad name.
   
3. Business travelers need charging points for both a laptop and phone - hello people when u built a new airport, didnt any of those bright consultants tell you about this? holy cow.... AAI does better these days
4. They have 10 gates which is good... but then hello you cant have me run around gate to gate trying to check where my flight is boarding - what happened to those tv screens which gave departure information? they have i think 2 or was it three....
5. At 1:15 in the night, we tried getting out of the parking lot and they have one counter which is being run manually - so I was stuck behind 14 vehicles - 10 mins wasted.... can someone plz think of the value of my time at 1:30 in the morning?
   

There are lots more..... since I do like 2 flights a week, I will keep posting...Hopefully for my city, they will get their act better.....

Sad part, everyone who has come back from hyderbad says the airport is magnificent.... so here we lose out again. Congrats GMR, pity a Siemens , L&T, Zurich airport cant get it right!!!