'To dream big has always been my motto': CEO at 27

'To dream big has always been my motto': CEO at 27

Prasanna D Zore











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November 21, 2007

Very few people can boast of achievements that M Thiagarajan, the 29-year-old promoter, chief executive officer and managing director of Chennai-based Paramount Airways notched so early in his life.

At 27, on October 19, 2005 to be precise, he launched India's first and only 'business class' airline Paramount Airways. Before that he had set up Paramount Mills in Madurai when he was dabbling in business management.

Apart from that he is an avid stargazer and a hobby pilot. In fact, an interesting incident inside a flight simulator in Frankfurt sparked Thiagarajan's passion for aviation.

"A pilot friend of mine had invited me to view his 747 Jumbo Jet flight simulator in Frankfurt. I was seated in the simulator and my friend was called away. I began to idly press the buttons and fidget with the controls. I created enough chaos to bring the flight instructor running!" said he in an e-mailed interview with rediff.com's Prasanna D Zore. That incident played a crucial role in Thiagarajan turning into an aviator.

Despite coming from an illustrious family -- his grandfather Sri Karumuttu Thiagaraja Chettiar, a reputed name in the field of textiles and education founded Bank of Madura which has now merged with ICICI Bank [Get Quote] -- this gutsy aviator says that he believes in functioning independently of the family connections. "I believe that one needs to blaze one's own path in life."

And that he has done time and again to prove his point. When most entrepreneurs thought of starting low-cost airlines like Air Deccan and Spice Jet, Thiagarajan purchased the next-generation aircraft from Embraer to give travellers an 'Elite flying experience'.

The other feather in the cap of this 29-year-old is that Paramount succeeded in making operational profits within two years of its existence and boasts of an attrition rate of employees of zero per cent.

Very soon Paramount will spread its wingspan across India � currently it services only the southern sector � for the company is in the process of buying 40 more Embraer jets.

How did it all begin? Who and what inspired you to start an airline business? You had also started Paramount Mills before starting the airlines business. What made you venture into the airline business?

I've always been fascinated by aviation and astronomy. Stargazing is a hobby and the wide expanse of the skies has always captivated me. My first encounter with aviation began when I was holidaying in Germany [Images], many years ago.

A pilot friend of mine had invited me to view his 747 Jumbo Jet flight simulator in Frankfurt. I was seated in the simulator and my friend was called away. I began to idly press the buttons and fidget with the controls. I created enough chaos to bring the flight instructor running!

But the incident, humourous though it was, sparked a very real passion for aviation. After that I started taking the pilot in me seriously and joined the flying school near London [Images]. When the instructor there asked me to fly a Cessna, I told him I only flew 747s. It was an amazing feeling to become a full-fledged pilot with a license to fly!

At 26, I wanted to nurture my passion further taking advantage of the Open Skies policy in India, I decided to set up Paramount Airways. To dream big has always been my motto and it was my desire to create an organisation that would reflect excellence and give me an opportunity to set up a global brand.

By then, I had already established my own textile mills -- Paramount Mills in Madurai, which won a national award for the highest export of cotton products from the Textile Export Promotion Council Of India. My journey while establishing Paramount Mills began even as I was graduating in management.

Having decided to venture into the civil aviation sector I started to assiduously research the various existing business models of international airline companies. This was to primarily understand the trend that was ingrained in commercial aviation. I soon realised that I didn't want to imitate any model.

I knew Paramount had to be unique; a model created to bring out the true joy of flying, to cherish and celebrate the experience of air travel. Paramount Airways is a 'High Value Carrier' -- one that gives you the best comfort in the skies at the best possible price, affording you true value for money and a flying experience that has no parallel.

You come from a very illustrious family. Did that help you when you launched Paramount Airways?

We're a very traditional family with three generations of involvement in the textile industry. My grandfather, Sri Karumuttu Thiagaraja Chettiar was a doyen in the field of textiles who founded several educational institutes and the former Bank of Madura which has now merged with ICICI Bank.

The family is rooted in ethical and traditional values, which include teetotalism and vegetarianism. I have a great passion for literature. As for my educational qualifications, I'm a business management graduate and a qualified hobby pilot.

My grandfather was an industrialist and philanthropist who had made great strides in business and education. He has always been my inspiration. However, I have always functioned independently of the family business; I believe that one needs to blaze one's own path in life.

Are there any advantages/disadvantages of starting an airline business at such an early age?

It is my firm belief that age is never a stumbling block as long as your vision is clear and your commitment to your goals is always your top priority.

Did you start this business on your own? What was the reaction of your family when you started this business?

Yes, Paramount Airways is my brainchild. My family has always been very supportive of the venture. Perhaps my family was a tad surprised that I was seriously considering another venture apart from textiles, over which the family has had a strong hold for generations.



What distinguishes your style of operations from the rest in the space? Who are your competitors?

Paramount Airways, translated literally means the pinnacle or the highest summit -- the peak of excellence.

Paramount Airways is a growing aspirational brand designed with the comfort of the traveller in mind. Our flight pattern is such that there is a convenient flight all through the day to all the sectors we fly. The day return flights have been well received by the business traveller as a great advantage. So we have been able to put together an innovative package of services and offer value based excellence to the discerning flyer.

This has fired the imagination of the customer who is value driven and appreciates a good brand when he sees one. We have differentiated ourselves as a value-based airline in terms of customer-orientation and have been categorised as a 'High Value Carrier' -- a model that is now being followed by other airlines across the world.

Can you share with us the secret behind Paramount Airways making operational profits with only two years into operations when other big airlines struggle to do it?

Dreaming big, a clear vision and sheer hard work makes the impossible, the often untried, happen!

How do you manage an attrition rate of zero per cent at Paramount Airways?

Quite simply -- we provide an excellent environment that nurtures and supports employees at all levels.

We have structured and well managed training programs, which, as a continuous improvement practice, is a great motivator and engages the employees while on the job. Apart from this, we involve each department in leisure pursuits outside of the office, in order for them to bond better and de-stress.

We also have established clear career paths bringing in technology and best international practices in our processes and systems. Our functional heads in key areas have international exposure, having run global airlines. All this, in addition to the right attitude in addressing employee related issues has minimised our attrition.

We also have specific employee recognition programs and send letters of commendation to those who excel at their tasks.

If somebody has to join Paramount Airways, what are the skills/qualities that you look out for in your potential staff?

I essentially look for the qualities of a winner -- someone who deeply believes in the company's ideals, would be willing to go that extra mile and are completely committed. We basically look for dynamic, creatively inspired individuals. Experience takes a back seat to attitude.

Any important message for young entrepreneurs who'd also want to make it big in life like you did?

My message to young entrepreneurs and readers is this -- persevere endlessly while believing in yourself and your dreams. Nurture your strength of mind and your power of conviction, while exploring our rich heritage and traditional roots. Live life to the fullest and contentment will always be yours!

What are your plans to make Paramount Airways the best airline in India/World?

Right now, the focus is on nurturing and further enhancing our loyal client base, providing as much of value as we can to the entire experience of flying to our 'Elite Travellers'.

I'm happy that Paramount has achieved global recognition for its unique model and has clearly established a leadership position in the Southern skies where we fly with a 26 per cent market share. What I am really proud of is the fact that Paramount through its unique offering and value-based service excellence has redefined airline travel in the country.

Concepts such as 'fine dining in the sky' with a four-course meal served in opulence and style on our aircraft and other fringe benefits such as valet service, 30 kgs baggage allowance (which is the highest when compared to the economy classes of other airlines), no cramped middle seats, the highest cabin crew per passenger ratio in the world on domestic sectors -- all translates into exceptional comfort and value.

Whether it is the gilded crockery or the linen serviette or the personal warm attention that our cabin crew gives to every passenger, our goal is to pamper our passengers. Every service we provide has been carefully tailor made for this. We take special care to ensure that our signature cuisine is created especially to suit our different clientele's tastes in various sectors that we fly.

A lot of care and effort has gone into seeing that a Paramount experience is a personal experience. We remain the first airline in the world to introduce an 'All Business Class' service bringing in quality differentiation in the basic offering itself. I have often heard people say that flying in a Paramount is akin to flying a corporate jet.

All this is a reflection of the business model that we arrived at after intensive research to understand the psyche of the typical passenger in the flying sector, his need for luxury, comfort and good service, the various business practices in the industry, even at the international level. Today we have largely succeeded in getting the discerning passenger to look at Paramount seriously primarily because of the fact that we are differentiated from the rest and appeal to his sense of belonging.

We have created a product that is aligned with the passengers' beliefs on moving up the ladder as per Maslow's theory of needs. With quality-edge and premium positioning we would like to establish our brand wherever we operate.

Winning the International Arch of Europe Award in the Gold Category in Frankfurt in February 2007 has helped reaffirm our goals. When I received the award from Mr Jose. E.Prieto, Executive President and CEO of the Business Initiatives Directions, he said and I quote "The awarded companies are symbols of commitment to leadership, technology and innovation which make them models for other companies in their sectors."

While the industry was focusing only on Airbus and Boeing we were the first to introduce the next-generation aircraft from Embraer which fly-by-wire. While giving the air-traveller a completely new experience we also made sure of our operational efficiency through this highly fuel efficient jets.

As for our future goals, we would like to saturate and consolidate our leadership position in the south and then get into the western India market which should happen shortly. We shall adopt the same strategy connecting Tier II and Tier III cities with the hub expanding and penetrating the market where possible.

We are in the process of acquiring 40 more Embraer jets over a period of time till 2011. Once we saturate and establish leadership in the western market we aim to have a National footprint by 2011.

Images: M Thiagarajan, CEO and MD of Paramount Airways. Photograph courtesy: Paramount Airways

How she enriched Google's idea factory

November 14, 2007 08:55 IST

Power Player

A headhunter persuaded Marissa Mayer to join Google, Inc in 1999 as a programmer -- Google's twentieth employee. Now, Marissa Mayer is charged with making sure that the tech giant continues to crank out brilliant ideas, even as clever competitors are hatching their own.

Champion of Innovation

In late 1998, when Marissa Mayer first heard about a small outfit called Google, she hardly batted an eye. The Stanford University graduate student was encouraged by her advisor to check out the research of two guys on the computer science building's fourth floor who were developing ways to analyze the World Wide Web.

But Internet start-ups were as common as hay fever in Silicon Valley. Mayer, then 23, was leaning in another direction. She was considering taking a teaching gig at Carnegie Mellon University. And the thought of joining up with some of the university's techies wasn't exactly appealing. "I knew about the Stanford PhD types," she muses. "They love to Rollerblade. They eat pizza for breakfast. They don't shower much. And they don't say 'Sorry' when they bump into you in the hallway."

Fortunately for both Google Inc and Mayer, she had a change of heart. Since joining Google, Mayer has emerged as a powerful force inside the high-flying company. Her title, director of consumer Web products, belies her power and influence as a champion of innovation. Mayer has her hands on virtually everything the average Google user sees � from the look of its Web pages to new software for searching your hard drive. And she helps decide which new initiatives get the attention of the company's founders and which don't.

Mayer doesn't handle all this herself. One of the key reasons for Google's success is a belief that good ideas can, and should, come from anywhere. Page and Brin insist that all engineers in the company have one day a week to work on their own pet projects. An ideas mailing list is open to anyone at Google who wants to post a proposal. What Mayer does is help figure out how to make sure that good ideas bubble to the surface and get the attention they need. The task is becoming more complex as Google grows, with a workforce of 4,200 now and revenues on track to hit $3.7 billion this year.

In Wausau, Mayer was one of the top debaters on her high school team. Then the brainy teenager decided to try out for the pom-pom squad and made that team, too. To some who knew her, Mayer was making a point. "She wanted to smash the image of the airhead cheerleader," says Jim Briggs, Mayer's high school debate coach. Her debate team ended up winning the Wisconsin state championship; her pom-pom squad was the state runner-up.

A large part of Mayer's success at Google is due to her ability to travel easily between different worlds. When she first joined, the company had something of a high school cliquishness, albeit in reverse. At lunch, the coolest kids � in this forum, the smartest geeks -- sat together. On the periphery, sales and marketing folks gathered. Mayer could hold her own in either realm. "She's a geek, but her clothes match," says one former employee.

Part of Mayer's challenge is realizing when certain formulas are faltering. For years she ran the company's top 100 priorities list, which ranked projects by order of importance. But as Google's workforce grew, the list soared to more than 270 projects. Last year Google executives decided that the list had run its course and shut it down. "People don't get attached to the processes themselves at Google," says Bret Taylor, product manager for Google Maps. "It's very unusual. Even at small companies, people tend to say: 'This is the way we do X.'"

Open door policy

At 4 pm, Mayer's three-times-a-week office hours begin. It's a tradition that Mayer brought over from her days at Stanford, where she taught computer science to undergraduates. Over the years, such meetings have spawned some big ideas, including Google's social-networking site Orkut.

First to enter her office are a pair of techies -- a man and woman in their mid-twenties. Sitting across from Mayer, separated by a desk with a Dilbert coffee mug and a toy robot still in its box, they forgo the pleasantries and launch into hushed banter. The duo is stumped over which languages the Google Web site should be available in. Although it is already translated into more than 115 tongues, from Arabic to Zulu, they wonder whether they should proceed with more obscure choices. Before one minute elapses, Mayer interjects. Google shouldn't be the arbiter on languages. Just include anything considered legitimate by a third-party source, such as the CIA World Fact Book, she says. "We don't want to make a large geopolitical statement by accident."

Capturing Ideas from anyone, anywhere

Office hours are just one way in which Mayer connects with inventive engineers and managers. Another is Google's ideas mailing list, the e-mail thread where anyone can submit or comment on an idea. At times, the thread more resembles a from of techie Darwinism. Google newcomers who proffer an especially obvious suggestion ("Why don't we search blogs?") or something off-topic like how to arrange the cafeteria tables often suffer withering rebukes. "It's about 50 percent new ideas, 50 percent indoctrination of new employees," says Mayer.

It's all part of a culture that's not for the faint of heart. Google oozes with what one ex-employee calls "geek machismo." Intellectual sparring can get heated. In the cafeteria, "food gets thrown," says the former employee.

Fearless culture

What Mayer thinks will be essential for continued innovation is for Google to keep its sense of fearlessness. "I like to launch [products] early and often. That has become my mantra," she says. She mentions Apple Computer and Madonna. "Nobody remembers the Sex Book or the Newton. Consumers remember your average over time. That philosophy frees you from fear."

This is just one way that Mayer tries to maintain the search company's original culture. That's no easy task. Movie night, for instance, was a piece of cake when perhaps 100 employees descended on a local cinema. Today, organizing such an event is a full-time job. Yet Mayer handles several of these a year, from picking a movie with the right geek credibility (say, Star Wars: Episode III) to ordering thousands of tickets to writing the software that lets her track who has received them. "She still walks around with a laptop, handing out all the tickets beforehand," marvels Google's Silverstein.

It makes sense for Mayer to stay in such close touch with the swelling ranks of Googlers. She may need every one of their bright ideas to keep the search giant ahead of the competition. Here go the key factors of Google's success:

Nurture great ideas from all levels of the company, not just the top.
Be available to employees so that they have an opportunity to get their ideas heard.
Demand creativity by giving employees "free thinking time" to develop pet projects, no matter how far from the company's central vision.
Acquire good ideas. Although preferring to develop new technologies in house, Google is also willing to snap up small companies with interesting initiatives.
Excerpted from Marketing Power Plays. Price Rs 299. Reprinted by permission of Tata McGraw Hill Publishing Company Limited. Copyright 2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.

Business books you must read

It has been a good year for business books. Spoilt for choice, readers have had a tough time making up their minds. Should they find out why Nassim Nicholas Taleb is urging everybody to imagine the unimaginable (Black Swan), or delve into Alan Greenspan's take on the world economy (The Age of Turbulence)?

Will a look at how auto manufacturers are gearing up for new cars, new fuels and new technologies (Zoom) be more interesting than venturing deep into the dingy offices of investment bank Lazard Frer�s to find out how multi-million deals were swung, and at what cost (The Last Tycoons)?

Those may be among the best business books of the year, but don't close the list just yet. There's more ahead. Several must-read books are planned for the coming few months, while some have been launched in the weeks just past.

Written by experts in management, business and strategy, these books promise to be inspiring, informative and educational. Some of them may even be fun reads.

The Future of Management
Gary Hamel
Harvard Business School Press
Pages: 288
India release: October 2007

Who wrote it
Gary Hamel is the visiting professor of strategic and international management at the London Business School. He is the author of Leading the Revolution and co-author, with C K Prahalad, of Competing for the Future.

What its about
Legacy beliefs prevent organisations from overcoming new, 21st-century challenges. The way forward is management innovation: new ways of mobilising talent, allocating resources and building strategies. How do you turn your company into a serial innovator and make it fit for the future? Case studies from Google, Whole Foods, IBM and Samsung help Hamel illustrate his new theories. Not all of it is practical, but Hamel's point of view is always interesting.

Redefining Global Strategy
Pankaj Ghemawat
Harvard Business School Press
Pages: 288
India release: October 2007

Who wrote it
Pankaj Ghemawat's website describes him as a "global strategist". On leave from Harvard as professor of business administration, he is currently professor of global strategy at IESE Business School, and is the author of several books on business strategy.

What it's about
Globalisation is a myth and thinking the world is flat is so Middle Ages. At best, the world is "semiglobalised", so cross-border integration does not necessarily mean standardisation. Quite the opposite, suggests Ghemawat. Most economic activity happens locally, so tailor your strategies to suit your markets. Examples from Toyota, Procter & Gamble, Tata Consultancy Services [Get Quote] and IBM add some much-needed colour to this scholarly tome.

The Professional
Kenichi Ohmae
McGraw-Hill
Pages: 208
India release: January 2008

Who wrote it
Known as "Mr Strategy", Kenichi Ohmae is Japan's top management guru, a former senior partner at McKinsey & Co, and the author of more than 140 books, including the bestselling The Mind of the Strategist.

What it's about
The Professional was published in Japanese in 2005 and is appearing in English now for the first time. In it, Ohmae presents his vision for changing the culture of leadership, explaining how "professionals" (that is, managers) need to acquire the expertise, ethics and discipline to grow their business and deliver the highest value to customers, and how that will help them reclaim their social prominence and respectability.

Trump Never Give Up
Donald J Trump
Wiley
Pages: 208
India release: January 2008

Who wrote it
"The Donald" is the New York based real-estate magnate who had it all, lost it all and then got it all � all over again. Donald Trump is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for the biggest financial turn around in history. He is also the host of popular television reality show The Apprentice.

What it's about
In this follow-up to his 2006 bestseller Trump 101: The Way to Success, Trump shares dramatic stories from the most difficult moments in his career. Like in the earlier book, each story is followed by coaching and commentary from adversity expert Paul Stoltz. With chapters titled "When your wardrobe malfunctions in front of 10,000 people", "How would I look with a shaved head?" and "A billion dollars in the hole", this promises to be an entertaining, engaging read.

The Chindia Tide
Jagdish Sheth
Tata McGraw-Hill
Pages: 225
India release: December 2007

Who wrote it
Marketing guru Jagdish Sheth is professor of marketing at the Goizueta Business School at Emory University. He is the author of more than 200 books and research papers, many of which are considered classics in their field.

What it's about
If the 20th century belonged to the US, Sheth believes the 21st will be China's and India's. "Chindia" will serve as the engine of growth for the global economy and it couldn't have happened at a better time � without these two powerhorses, the world economy would stumble, if not collapse. Like the US then, Chindia now is committed to a "peaceful rise" - which means not just prosperity, but much-needed stability as well. If you're interested in how post-colonial geopolitics plays out, this should be right up your street.

The Rule of Three in India
Jagdish Sheth, Rajendra S Sisodia and Gita Piramal
Tata McGraw-Hill
Pages: 300
India release: February 2008

Who wrote it
Rajendra Sisodia is professor of marketing and founding director of the Center for Marketing Technology at Bentley College, Massachusetts. He has co-authored several books with Jagdish Sheth. Gita Piramal is a consultant, an author and managing editor, The Smart Manager.

What it's about
In 2002, Sheth and Sisodia wrote the original The Rule of Three, postulating that only three players will dominate in any market. The rest will compete by specialising in product or market segment. The authors proved their theory with example after example from the developed world. Now, they're extending it to India, having studied over 200 companies here. How does the rule play out in India? What strategies should Indian companies adopt to ensure they emerge winners?

India's Century
Kamal Nath
Tata McGraw-Hill
Pages: 320
India release: November 2007

Who wrote it
Kamal Nath is the Union Minister of Commerce and Industry.

What it's about
It's being touted as the first book of its kind - "exclusive details and personal knowledge" of India's journey to becoming a global economic giant from a political insider. Anecdotes of Nath's negotiations with major national and international figures should be particularly interesting.

Leaders at All Levels
Ram Charan
Wiley
Pages: 192
India release: December 2007

Who wrote it
Internationally renowned leadership guru Ram Charan is a prolific writer. He co-authored (with Larry Bossidy) the wildly successful Execution and has also written bestsellers like What the CEO Wants You to Know and The Leadership Pipeline. He has taught at Harvard and Kellogg and consults with Fortune 100 giants such as Colgate-Palmolive, DuPont and GE.

What it's about
CEO failure is becoming increasingly common. But the crisis in leadership is as much a symptom as a cause of what is wrong with management today. Companies don't develop their unit managers' leadership potential and, therefore, the succession pipeline is never filled. With unit managers underdeveloped, execution is weak, further exacerbating the problem. Ram Charan advocates considering leadership development a core competency across organisations - a hands-on, integral business function that is implemented at all levels.

India's Global Wealth Club
Geoff Hiscock
Wiley
Pages: 320
India release: November 2007

Who wrote it
Veteran journalist Geoff Hiscock is Asia business editor and Sydney bureau chief for CNN.com International.

What it's about
Hiscock's earlier two books, Asia's Wealth Club and Asia's New Wealth Club covered 100 billionaires in the region. Now, he profiles 100 of India's richest and explains how they did it, listing seven "secrets" behind their success. The life stories are grouped according to sectors - the global top 10, followed by auto, pharma, media, aviation and so on.

We are Like That Only
Rama Bijapurkar
Portfolio Books
Pages: 292
India release: November 2007

Who wrote it
Marketing consultant Rama Bijapurkar is visiting faculty at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. She consults with a range of companies on market strategy and consumer behaviour and has worked with McKinsey & Co, Marg and Hindustan Lever [Get Quote].

What it's about
Why the Indian consumer is "like that only", why Consumer India will not change in a hurry, how Indians consume, what they buy, why they buy...Bijapurkar analyses 12 key aspects of Consumer India.

The Global Brain
By Satish Nambisan and Mohanbir Sawhney
Wharton School Publishing
Pages: 304
India release: November 2007

Who wrote it
A former area sales manager with Hindustan Lever, Satish Nambisan is a professor of technology management and strategy at the Lally School of Management, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. Mohanbir Sawhney is the professor of technology and the director of the Center for Research in Technology & Innovation at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. This is his fourth book.

What it's about
In management speak, "global brain" refers to the network of people who can help enhance an organisation's innovation strategy, even though they lie outside its boundaries - customers, suppliers, researchers, independent inventors and so on. To innovate effectively, companies must harness these new sources of creativity. But there's really no one-size-fits-all strategy to "network-centric innovation". Drawing on the experiences of companies like IBM, Procter & Gamble, DuPont, 3M, Unilever and others, Nambisan and Sawhney show how to identify and create specific capabilities that enhance the innovation process, and include tips on how to overcome the "not invented here" mindset.

Value Merchants
James Anderson, Nirmalya Kumar and James Narus
Harvard Business
School Press
Pages: 240
India release: November 2007

Who wrote it
James Anderson is professor of marketing/ wholesale distribution at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. Nirmalya Kumar is professor of marketing, director of Centre for Marketing, and co-director of Aditya V Birla India Center at London Business School. James Narus is a professor of marketing at the Babcock Graduate School of Management, Wake Forest University (Charlotte, NC).

What it's about
If the consumer market is tough, the B2B one is particularly cut-throat. Purchasing agents intent on paring their procurement costs have a single-point agenda - price concessions - which makes it especially difficult for suppliers to prove the "value" of their offerings. How can suppliers demonstrate superior value compared to the next best alternative from the customer's viewpoint? With case studies from Tata Steel [Get Quote], Quaker Chemical and Sonoco, Value Merchants appears a serious, academic work.

What the Customer Wants You to Know
Ram Charan
Portfolio Books
Pages: 160
India release: January 2008

Who wrote it
Ram Charan (See Leaders at All Levels)

What it's about
Rethinking sales from the outside in. Don't begin with what you have to sell, advises Ram Charan. Start with your customer's problems - understand what makes her tick. And then become a trusted partner, someone the customer turns to for creative, cost-effective solutions, which you will be able to provide because you know your customer inside out. A utopian ideal perhaps, but nice to read nevertheless.

Billions of Entrepreneurs
Tarun Khanna
Penguin Viking
Pages: 400
India release: February 2008

Who wrote it
Tarun Khanna is professor of strategy at Harvard Business School. He is co-editor of the Journal of Economics and Management Strategy and of the Journal of International Business Studies and serves on the editorial boards of several prestigious strategy and management journals.

What it's about
How do the entrepreneurial forces shaping India and China's development compare? Where do they overlap and complement one another and where do they diverge and compete? And how can Western companies participate in this development?

The Real Price of Everything
Michael Lewis
Penguin
pages: 1,472
India release: January 2008

Who wrote it
Michael Lewis is the bestselling author of Liar's Poker and Moneyball, which offered a never-before look behind the scenes on Wall Street.

What it's about
Lewis explores six classic economic texts that shaped the present economic system. That includes Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, Thomas Malthus's An Essay on the Principle of Population, and John Keynes's General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. If the choice seems uncomfortably reminiscent of college required reading lists, you'll have Lewis's entertaining commentary to liven things up.

Success story: A $250,000 business, aged 25

November 15, 2007
What does it take to start a company? Well, if you are Atul Khekade of Innovation Trip, then only $2,000 would be sufficient to bankroll a business -- a business that is expected to generate revenues of $250,000 by December and if all goes as planned, could well hit the million dollar mark by 2008.
Life has not always been so easy for Atul. He studied in a Marathi medium school where the culture of entrepreneurship was unheard of and getting a job was considered a better option than becoming a businessman.

"I enjoyed my school days because I had a great circle of friends. But what we lacked was an atmosphere that encouraged entrepreneurship. I'd have been four years ahead in what I am doing now," says 25-year-old Atul, "had they taught us some basics about starting a business."

Not one to be bogged down by such hurdles as having studied in a vernacular medium school and brought up in an atmosphere that shunted entrepreneurship, Atul succeeded in opening his own company, Innovation Trip, in partnership with his friend Anand Chhatbar in 2005.

Also read: 'How I founded my own company at 26'
"We at Innovation Trip act like a bridge that spans the gap between an innovative idea and its successful execution," says Atul about his company's core business. In other words, the company arranges for corporate executives to meet with idea innovators abroad and discuss these ideas one-on-one.

Though Atul spends most of his time in the US scouting for innovators willing to exchange ideas with bright minds across the world, he was in Pune recently and spoke of his business plans with rediff.com's Prasanna D Zore.

Tell us about your school and college days and your first business venture.

I studied in Parle Tilak Vidyalaya, a Marathi medium school in Vile Parle, a Mumbai suburb. Life was good there and thanks to the circle of friends I had I learned a lot about life. Having good friends around you plays a crucial role in shaping your personality. What we all lacked, however, was some kind of introduction to and training in entrepreneurship. Most of the children studying there came from middle-class Marathi families who preferred performing services rather than starting up their own businesses.

I completed my engineering course in Information Technology from the Sardar Patel College of Engineering. After completing the course I started working with i-Flex as a software engineer. I worked there for about a year and then quit to start Innovation Trip in 2005. Most of that year I planned meticulously to start Innovation Trip; I was only 23 at the time.

Before Innovation Trip happened, I obtained a diploma in computer engineering from the Government Polytechnic in Mumbai and Anand (Chhatbar) and me started a small enterprise. We developed applications for the Web, writing software programmes and selling them to companies. It was very difficult at that time to squeeze out our rightful payments from clients -- while it was a profitable venture, we had to push to receive dues for anything that we did. That was sort of a grounding for me to start my next enterprise, Innovation Trip.

So the next big thing was Innovation Trip. What was it like setting up the company?

The experience pretty much went according to plan. We realised that a lot of successful ventures in India were a copy of some overseas dotcom venture. We wanted to teach participants to look at innovation as a continuous process -- how to discover customer needs and brainstorm to find an innovative solution that met those needs in the form of a product.

We believe that India has a lot of grassroot innovations. But they don't materialise into successful businesses because bootstrapping a business is quite difficult in India. We train corporate executives to see innovation as a process. We have sessions with them on product prototyping, customer-centric innovation, how to identify customer needs, how to make companies innovation-oriented and how to develop cultural innovation.

We conduct these kinds of workshops with a company's executives in attendance. We take them on visits to organisations in the US like Ideo, the company that designed the palmtop, in Palo Alto. These sessions help people understand the importance of innovation and pioneering work in making a company successful.

What is Innovation Trip's business model?

We started Innovation Trip as an event model. We take corporate executives from all over the world to countries like the US, Australia and Latin America and have them train and interact with innovators abroad.

We arrange tours to various companies, facilitate their interaction with innovators in these organisations and help them exchange ideas. We had the chief technology officer of Hewlett Packard, Phil McKinney, exchange his views with our participants wherein he shared how innovation played an important role in HP's success.

Basically, it is a knowledge transfer exercise wherein people who are innovators and entrepreneurs come together and exchange ideas. While some ideas actually materialise into innovation, others act as catalysts for future innovation. We at Innovation Trip act like a bridge that spans the gap between an innovative idea and its successful execution.

Apart from Ideo and HP we've had our participants interact with those who have set up centres for companies like Pitney Bowes, a Fortune 500 company. If we can't schedule a company visit then we take them to visit people who have actually been a part of innovation at Fortune 500 companies.

What are the guiding principles that you follow at Innovation Trip?

First and foremost we have to make our customers feel that they are getting a bang for their buck. The learning that they take home from a tour abroad is worth what we charge them. And we make sure that we give them a great experience; we book luxury hotels and we spend a lot of money on the whole experience. At the same time we have to ensure that we make a profit.

So, is Innovation Trip making profits today? What's your revenue model?

Our revenues come from registration fees that every participant has to pay us for organising trips abroad. We charge around $9,000 per participant. That is the main contribution. Apart from that we receive money from companies that sponsor events like dinners, panel discussions, outbound trips etc.

We expect around $250,000 in revenues for the period ending December 2007. Even if we have not grown too fast in the revenue department up until now, we recently changed our revenue model and by the end of December 2008 we expect to quadruple that figure (that's $1 million).

We will achieve this figure by scaling down on our expenses and removing hurdles that prevent us from scaling our business model. Now, instead of arranging and scheduling an expert's lecture we let our participants have a one-on-one with a whole bunch of innovators where ideas are exchanged on a personal basis.

This reduces the cost of booking an auditorium and allows us to scale our business.

The profit margin we maintain is in the range of 30 to 40 percent, Innovation Trip being in an elite kind of business. We do spend a lot of money in giving our clients a holistic experience in innovation but then we also charge them accordingly.

Who are your corporate clients from India?

As of now we have 22 customers from India. Prominent amongst them are GEI Godavari Engineering from Hyderabad, BPI Engineering, UTI Logistics which is a multi-billion dollar logistics firm, Suchir India Group, a real estate group and a BSE-listed company Bartronics India [Get Quote].

CEO at 30: Sandeep Murthy shares his story
Are you planning to raise money for scaling your operations anytime soon?

We are planning to raise some capital soon from private investors in India. Once the company attains a significant size, in say a couple of years, we want to take it public.

And how much would be a 'significant' size?

It will be worth at least $10 million and we are confident of achieving that target in the next 2-3 years. That should take our profits into the range of $3-$4 million by 2009-10.

Any advice for budding entrepreneurs in India?

India is a great place to do business but then there are lots of hurdles in bootstrapping a venture.

I'd advise young entrepreneurs to be more global in their outlook. Setting up a company and having it registered here is a tricky business. So I'd advise that entrepreneurs should have their companies registered abroad and then establish a subsidiary in India.

Even Innovation Trip works on that model. We have registered in the US and run a subsidiary in India. This helps us grow in appeal as an international company. India as a country is great to operate in because of its low costs.

Story of opportunities - from NEN

I was thinking for sometime to take stock of the variety of opportunities that is open for the present generation as a career options. It took a while to capture the thoughts and could manage to pen down few things out of my perspective and experience. Please excuse me for bowling and juggling over the things while you read.



To start with I remember the days where most of the parents from typical middle class background dream of their kids becoming doctors, engineers or lawyers. To some extent this is even applicable now. I began to show interest in engineering domain as my parents told me that I am good in imagination, construction etc in my childhood days. I never know or even think of any other domain until recently as a career option. Of late I think I have come into terms in understanding the other domains, field of interest, career options and business.



At the bubbling age of my career I felt to take up entrepreneurship in manufacturing, production, typical machine shop, as I was fascinated to imitate some of the success my relatives were in such field.



I used to wonder about the banking guys, handling money and transactions. My definition of banking industry is that you keep and play with some one?s money or asset or the so called futures to make out of it and pay back some percentage of the profit (interest) in many forms.



Back to engineering domain, initial days in mechanical, civil stream saw plenty of tools floating and coming up to solve, create, present, imagine and analyse a problem. This paved a way to open up a job market, as many started learning the tool than the process, or technique behind the commonsense. Added to that many started to hire and buy those and thus a huge learning in terms of software tools and product design came in to fore.

To name a few, Proe, Auto cad, Catia, UG, Ansys, Staad were some of the modeling tool released some time back in 1995.Down the line saw some more deeper fluid problem solving tools like Fluent, Gambit, Tgrid, Cfdesign etc. Few the so-called experienced guys (2to 3 yrs) felt to take up it to explore job opportunities than domain knowledge. Ofcourse now there are much more to the scene like Abaqus, Hyper mesh, Lsdyna, I-deas, Nastran as meshing Analysis preprocessing, post processing tool.



Again if you take the automotive domain, OEMS, Tier 1, 2 suppliers, few are into core product design, process solutions, and simulations on performance and process capability. While some of the tier 1 companies are in to styling, BIW, art to part design solutions.



I had an opportunity to be part of many organizations that include brands like GE, Cummins, and Caterpillar. One of the things that fascinate me is the process focus in GE i.e. in to 6 sigma initiatives, technical achievements and people focused business in Caterpillar.



6 sigma is yet another tool, method opened up big opportunity in the career market as a meaning full way to improve things in a methodical manner, which require basic understanding of the situation, process, function or domain of interest. It is also a platform of placing people in an organization for career growth.



Product / process life cycle management is another version derived out from the office of big 3 where huge pay cheques are possible in NA even today.



Back to career options, 6 yrs back I was more focused to get a brand in my resume and was keen to work with companies like GE as that was my dream irrespective of what I do, but I think it still hold good for many due to the features, benefits, that it gives for an employee. There are lots of programs, interesting engagements, entertainments, and extracurricular activites at GE with games, GYM, play ground, tech stuffs for brainy.



Cummins is again people oriented, have decent market share and has good management focus on the need to survive in the market, while caterpillar is a fantastic organization where I learned leadership, people focus, employee engagement, process, a new way to look at 6 sigma.



How about investment domain, finance domain, trading, stocks? This is a wonderful place like banking where you can see many math geeks playing and adventuring money in soft form and creating a virtual asset. You know only 4% of the currencies are available in hard form rest 96% are in assets appreciation and invisible form held in papers. There is a huge opportunity like in this domain right from start up career to software career. I could see many are in to insurance field, mutual fund certified professionals, tax consultants, financial advisors. In my view if I had a change to switch and sustain I would have preferred to take up this as my career to mint money. I do play money games in stocks where there are many born lot prefer to lose money. I had made decent returns ranging from 5 % to 2000% profits with the little investments so this is obviously a lot to me. I use to hear my colleague say that many worship their computers, which they use to trade in stocks by red tilak, puja and ceremonies.



While I was hunting to do something on my own, I was pulled in to many things including MLM and burnt my fingers. I felt MLM is not my cup of tea and am not fit for that though it is lucratively sound in terms of the plan. Suddenly through some common contact I got in to a start up of a call center too while I was in Bangalore working for GE with a minimum investment in lacs!. I came to know about the business plan and no doubt is a huge opportunity. It is nothing but an investment in to the so called dubious huge data base of customers where the guy who sits over here in India would call up to find any opportunity to sell his product or concept. I could see even a 6 month experience guys would fetch some where about 16 to 20 k per month as salary at ban galore. Huge risk of life and business are at stake in this domain if you ask the direction of your career after 3 to 4 yrs?. But for business sake it is a short-term huge margin, high-risk stuff to adventure.

While I was again in to a hunt after burning my finger in a call center I got to know about Art works, painting as business. What a world it is? ?.I could browse through some of the fine art works, where people sell their arts for whooping lacs in a single deal.

Again is it a career for those who have passion like sports. I think it needs a special mindset and encouragement with the environment and parents. Similarly with the filmdom, theaters, luxury world of illusion right from technician?s artists, support service, directors, and producer to the guy who carries the films rolls to the theatre for collections. Any one knows the business of film distributorship?. The deal is like 70:30 in the beginning of the movie release for the distributors to 30: 70 for theatre owners who release the film in their theatres after few weeks to month of running.



There are lots of niche areas like R&D, cryptography, aerospace, plastics, composites, and biotechnologies. In terms of sectors like energy sectors, Textiles, Glass, wool, hatcheries and chemical are few. Of course there are many like telecommunications, Jewelry, Knitting dying, Publishing, Pharmacy, agriculture etc to think about choosing as a career.



In fact my first career started with a hosiery unit in Trichy where I was responsible for purchasing and process improvement in a dying unit. I was instrumental in setting up the stitching unit and Knitting unit for the hosiery garments which is a 100% EOU. That was a nice experience, which taught me about the variety of cloths, textures, processes, dying, matching colours etc. Could be a decent career with risk attached if it is a 100% EOU as the business mainly depends on the buyers.



Luckily my wife has Biochemistry background with MBA and her family has branches of doctors even in Moscow. An opportunity to learn medicine career to a small extent. As there is lots of domain and specialties to offer. Oncology is one niche area where there are very few specialized in India, head and neck surgery. Pathology can pave way to open clinical laboratories on own.



HR is one stream of late I admire, as I believe they play a vital role for any org in their goals and strategy. Some time back there was no the situation. Now the market shows lot of focus on talent management, competency mapping, and Employee engagement, training in soft skills. Recruitment, Balance scorecards are now the hot topic.



To put an end to this topic I wish to list few more avenues to think about career options.

Like retail segment where Reliance, Bharati is coming up in a big way. Tourism, catering, Education are other side where there are plenty of opportunity for career beginners and entrepreneurs. Back to mechanical stream there are still lots of opp into manufacturing sector, Sheet metal, Automotive electronic domain, metal cutting, punching shearing jobs

Story of Hotel Kamat

There’s never a dull moment with 54-year-old Vithal Kamat, executive chairman and managing director of Kamat Hotels India, the Rs 112 crore, Mumbai-based, hospitality group that has brands such as the Orchid Hotel and Lotus Suites among others.
He’s full of stories—about life, experiences, people. He’s put it all down, in fact, in a book—a management book—Idli, Orchid and Will Power! But this is just one side of him. There are many more facets.
Like, he is a motivational speaker, trainer, environmentalist apart from being a successful entrepreneur. Above all, he’s an ardent student of life, willing to partake of himself as easily as a child would.
Indeed, he has absolutely no qualms of being put under the scanner, not at all. Sample this: “I was born into a middle-class family, living in a one-room apartment in Grant Road, Mumbai. There were eight of us: three brothers, three sisters and parents. It was a common room, which would double up as a bedroom at night. The balcony outside was my punishment room. Anybody who played mischief was put there. That included me too.”
This early-life taming though, did nothing much to quell the fiery spirit in him. Years later he would put it to good use to chart his own course—of setting up hotels. “My father Venkatesh was already into the restaurant business when I was born. He was an industrious man, who began working in a restaurant at the age of eight.” Satkar, a popular restaurant in Mumbai, was started by Venkatesh Kamat way back in 1950. But this was not the first. The senior Kamat began his journey as a restaurateur with a small property in Mazgaon, Mumbai. This was followed by the Krishna Bhavan in the predominantly Muslim area of Null Bazaar in Mumbai. Samrat, Suvidha, Suruchi, Senate, the list of restaurants kept growing by the day.
A self-made man, Venkatesh Kamat’s children, especially, his restless middle son Vithal imbibed his qualities of hard work and dedication. “The most precious gift that our parents could give us were good values,” says Kamat.
“My father’s commitment to his work, his discipline, determination and self-regulation were a source of inspiration for me and my siblings. My mother’s ability to manage a large family, her sacrificing nature, for instance, she pawned her jewellery when my father needed money to start Satkar, were not lost on us.”
An engineer by qualification, Kamat’s initiation into the family business happened by accident. His father’s trusted aide, his brother-in-law, had betrayed him. There was no one to assist him in his business. That’s when Kamat and his elder brother stepped in to help their father. The dream of a blissful professional life was set aside forever. Life had indeed come a full circle for the young Kamat.
Once into the restaurant business, something Kamat’s father wished his kids hadn’t got into—the road to success wasn’t easy. Kamat had new ideas, new ways of doing business—some of which did not find favour with his conservative father. “Do business with anyone in the world but never on the basis of bogus newspaper ads,” the older Kamat would exhort his young charge.
But Kamat did manage to introduce some new features nevertheless, like serving beer at Samrat, one of the restaurants he was running alongwith his father. “I had already obtained the permit to serve liquor and father wouldn’t allow it. It took me four years to convince him. Finally, he relented on one condition: that there would be no unruly scenes by beer drinkers in the restaurant,” says Kamat.
This combination, of good food and chilled beer, augmented the customer base at Samrat. Numbers soared by the day. Even a hard-nosed restaurateur like Venkatesh Kamat admitted: “Vithal, you were right.” This was a personal victory for the young Kamat, of finally getting the approval of a man, who was, frankly, difficult to please.
“Our father was tough on us. But today, when I look back, I think it helped us in pushing ourselves. He wanted us to be achievers. And I resolved I would be one,” he says.
Kamat’s innate ability of having a way with people has helped him in no small measure in his drive to the top. As a child, when locked in the balcony of his one-room apartment for a playing a prank, it was his friends, young as they were, who would come to his rescue with whatever food they could. Kamat was able to work his charm on the legendary Rai Bahadur Mohan Singh Oberoi too—the doyen of the Indian hotel industry—who he met as a gawky youngster in the 1970s.
Oberoi was in Mumbai during those days in connection with the construction of his hotel Oberoi Sheraton. Kamat, still assisting his father, landed at the construction site of the hotel in Nariman Point, South Mumbai, on the tip-off from a friend. “I have come to meet the Big Boss,” he told the security guard on duty. Once in the presence of the man he idolised, it was hard for Kamat to contain his excitement, “I want to be a greater hotelier than you,” he told the rather dumbfounded Oberoi.
But Oberoi was kind enough to pardon the young man no older than his son. Years later when the Orchid Hotel was launched, Kamat extended his first invitation to Oberoi. Unable to make it to the inauguration, Oberoi responded with a tender letter, “I have forgotten many people in my life, but I could never forget you. You expressed a desire to become greater than I was. I had never met a person like you in my entire life.”
Kamat’s desire to excel has compelled him to try out new things. The Orchid Hotel, for instance, is a five-star ecotel, consistently rated as one of the best in the world. Lotus Suites, on the other hand, is a four-star budget hotel in Mumbai, which will be extended to tier II and III cities such as Nagpur, Raipur (located in Chattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh), Amboli and Aronde (both are located in the Sindhudurg district of Maharashtra).
Orchid itself will be taken to places such as Raipur, even as the group contemplates getting into the luxury heritage and resort segments. None of this would have been possible if Kamat did not take those first tentative steps in that direction in the 1980s.
He began by acquiring loss-making properties in places such as Vapi in Gujarat and Khandala in Maharashtra. This gave him the confidence to go for larger acquisitions such as the Plaza
Hotel in Mumbai. With Orchid coming on board in 1997, however, there has been no looking back for the group. Kamat Hotels India was publicly listed in 1996 and has just completed an $18-million foreign currency convertible bond
(FCCB) issue.
In the midst of all this, though, Kamat never fails to thank a few people who came into his life and made that crucial difference. If Oberoi was the man, Kamat looked up to professionally, the late Behram Contractor, a renowned journalist and columnist, was a personal friend and guide to him. “He was amazing. The grip on language he had was too good. I learnt to appreciate the finer things in life from him,” says Kamat.
This appreciation for the finer things in life can be found in his varied interests, be it writing, collecting antiques, books or running a museum. “I am not finished yet,” he says. “For me, this is only the beginning.”





Regards and thanks,
Muruganandan.
Dream is not what you see in sleep
is the thing which does not let you sleep

Top 10 Strategic technologies of 2008

-- Gartner Inc. research firm has recently released 2008’s TOP 10 strategic technology. A strategic technology is something that may have an impact on a business. And impact could mean driving an investment or posing a threat. It would mean if one of your competitors adopts it, it might make your company in soup or lands in a competitive advantage. Only market of 2008 decides this factor.





S.No
Technology
Market goyango.
Samples from leaders

1.
Green IT.
Yaaweh! That’s y people roam around carbon credit…
Look around all the releases of energy efficient laptops. Anyways, good gain from green.

2.
Unified communications
e-mail, instant messaging, desktop and advanced business applications, Internet Protocol (IP)-PBX, voice over IP (VoIP), presence, voice-mail, fax, audio video and web conferencing, unified messaging, unified voicemail, and whiteboarding into a single environment
Microsoft
Nortel
Alcatel-Lucent


3.
Business process management.
intersection between management and information technology,
Numerous tools are already rocking in the market.

4.
Metadata management
Don’t dream that I will tell everything.. go and search.


5.
Virtualization
All technological Disaster recovery approaches,


6.
Mashups
Mashup tools allow users to take things from multiple Web sites and combine them together to create a Web-centric composite application
Visit http://blogs.zdnet.com/Hinchcliffe/?p=63 to get full idea about various mashup tools and SaaS services. And www.DataMashups.com is one of the best

7.
The Web platform
Its new wine for those who have interest in computing vast amount of data – next stage of Grid, cluster computing.
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?

command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=

software&articleId=9041438

8.
Computing fabric
The simplest way to think about it is the next-generation architecture for enterprise servers. Fabric computing combines powerful server capabilities and advanced networking features into a single server structure.
http://www.infomaniacs.com/ComputingFabrics/Computing-Fabrics-And-Grids.htm#Response-to-Loom-for-Fabrics

9.
Real World Web
All web 2.0 features. Not sufficient to comment.


10.
Social software
Social networking sites turn to softwares to used to build advanced features in them.

Story of various entrepreneurs

The Fab Story
In this interview with Niranjan Mudholkar, K Vaitheeswaran, Chief Operating Officer (COO), Fabmall.com, illustrates his company's progress
Please tell us something about the origin of Fabmall.com (the concept), its history and the people involved.www.fabmall.com was set up in 1999 (called Fabmart.com then) by a group of six co-founders, all with an IT background. The co-founders were from Planetasia.com and Wipro, and I am one of them. We started the company with the concept that in future, the Internet will become a very popular medium in India and retailing on the Internet will also grow into a significant business. When we began, we realised that our business was at least five years ahead of the times. But we wanted to invest into it at an early stage so that when the concept became popular, we were well placed to take advantage of our early experience. Fabmart underwent a metamorphosis to become Fabmall with an online strategy that aimed at leveraging on its physical and corporate business. How successful has this objective been?It did serve its purpose when we made the change from Fabmart to Fabmall in 2003. But since then we have felt that while there are certain advantages, there are also some disadvantages in carrying the same brand offline and online. This is especially true when the product ranges are dissimilar. Customers were expecting to buy the same items from the outlets as well as online and got confused. We are now evaluating whether we should launch a new brand name online to avoid this confusion. Logistics is a critical factor when it comes to e-tailing, more so when you cater to customers across the country (and even overseas). How is Fabmall.com managing it?Fabmall.com is the only e-commerce company in India that focused on logistics as such. We have our own warehouse and employ a big team of logistics professionals. Other e-commerce companies avoid getting involved in logistics. They leave it to their vendors to take care of shipments. Fabmall.com has its own warehouse not just in India, but also in the US, which helps us ship orders worldwide.

A start-up venture’s CEO must adapt to changing times
India's performance in the current ICC cricket World Cup throws up several important lessons for entrepreneurs. The most notable of these is the criticality of planning: not just for the next few games but for the next several years. In turn, this planning requires the ability to see trends, visualise how these trends evolve over time and consequently impact the venture, if not now, then in the foreseeable future. Let me explain.
From a leisurely 5-day game with a rest day in-between, the game is today being played in a rapid 20-20 format. Fielding, that used to be at best equivalent to a stroll in the park, now requires supreme athleticism and anticipation. Technology that used to be non-existent has now become an integral part of the game. From a gentleman’s game it has become a multi-billion dollar brutally competitive—and I’m not talking of just the BCCI elections—sport with intense pressure from various quarters.


From playing a few days a year to playing around the year and where multiple players are groomed for every position rather than have positions of sinecure based on reputation. And so on. These throw up challenges of planning to those at the helm of the game to ensure that the performance of the team remains consistently high. To do effective planning, there must be the ability to visualise impending changes and make requisite changes—changes that are systemic and organisational. It is obvious that the Indian cricket system has a 19th century mindset in the 21st century.
As the CEO of a startup venture, it will be suicidal to have a similar mindset. You must, therefore, not only plan on how the market and customers are likely to behave in the coming years but also look at competition, the impact of technology on your company and its products, the challenges of attracting, grooming and retaining talent, and consequently what changes need to be made within your company to take best advantage of the situation. Changes include issues like transparency, accountability, empowerment, clear and consistent communication, creating a non-political environment, valuing professionalism, understanding that loyalty and competence are not substitutes, setting up systems to track and reward performance while driving efficiency. Investments in technology and training are necessary. Having the right person on the bus—as Jim Collins so eloquently describes in his book Good to Great—is of paramount importance. Having the right people in the right jobs has a cascading impact on the organisation’s competence and abilities because as the old saying goes, “First-grade people hire first-grade people. Second-grade people hire third-grade people.” Over time, without a meritocracy, only the third-grade people are left behind. One look at the Indian system of sports, among other areas, is enough to convince anyone that all of the above are conspicuously absent. A look at the tragic decline (demise?) of Indian hockey is illustrative of what happens when ignorance of trends in the game converges with corruption, politics, and incompetence. On the other hand, as the CEO of your venture, there’s another important learning from the world of cricket. How does one create a large number of maniacally obsessed, fanatic customers who will keep buying your products in ever larger numbers independent of the quality of their performance such that you generate incredibly high cash surpluses year on year? This too requires a great degree of understanding of the psyche of your customers, of the need to keep them constantly entertained with events and attracting newer market segments such as children with newer gimmicks.
In this light, it is important to keep in mind the US president Abraham Lincoln’s famous comment to a visitor to the White House in 1865: “If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. It is true that you may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”
And we all know what happened to Indian hockey, not to mention all other team sports, over the past 50 years.

‘Wanting freedom to execute my ideas, I became an entrepreneur’
Pradeep Kar, Chairman and Founder, Microland
Acknowledged as a “serial entrepreneur,” Kar is known for his mysterious charm for luring investors. He tells Pankaj Mishra that wooing investors is more about a convincing business plan than inter-personal relationships
“I wanted the freedom to execute my business ideas and enhance my earning capabilities. This prompted me to become an entrepreneur,” says a beaming Kar. After finishing his Bachelor of Engineering and Post Graduate Diploma in Management, Kar joined Wipro in the early eighties. “Wipro at that time was an organisation of 80 people with a turnover of Rs 4 crore,” says Kar. He left Wipro in 1984 to join Computer Point, a retail chain selling computer products. Kar honed his skills across functions like finance, human resources and administration before launching Sonata Software’s US operations in 1987.
Kar returned to India in 1989, for fulfilling his dream of launching a computer company. He, along with Anand Sudarshan and Jawahar Bekay, launched Microland, which is focused on the networking business. They got an early investment of Rs 20 lakh from the State Bank of India. In the late 90s, Kar decided to join the Internet bandwagon by launching Planetasia.com. “Planetasia was the first Indian company to have .com in its name. There were hundreds of companies listed on BSE and NSE looking to build their websites. Through Planetasia, we wanted to tap that potential market.”
Around that time he also launched Indya.com and Itspace.com. When Kar sold Indya.com to Star, people started describing his ventures as futile. “I think we don’t have enough maturity in the country to understand the dynamics of starting a venture and selling it off. Just because I sold Indya doesn’t mean the venture was a flop,” he argues. In its first round, Indya raised $53 million. Kar says that the investors made a happy exit, because they got a good RoI (Return on Investment). When the dotcom bust happened, Kar was left with no choice, but to exit from the Internet space. “We could either continue to be in the dotcom business, or make a complete exit. Fortunately for us, ‘Uncle Murdoch’ came in the right time and offered to buy out Indya. Now the group has been restructured with two entities Microland and Planetasia.”
Kar’s passion for launching new ventures is well acknowledged amongst the CEOs of Bangalore, who also know him as the founder of Beer Drinkers Association of IT (BAIT). “On July 1st 1994, MAIT was having its annual convention in Bangalore. We got some time off and I, along with a few friends, decided to have a gathering at PubWorld. Around 35 CEOs turned up, including Ashok Soota of Mindtree. In those days the hardware industry was witnessing cutthroat competition because of the limited number of clients. We needed a platform to ensure that camaraderie is not lost amongst the industry players. One of the goals of BAIT was to ‘Drown Our Sorrows’ (DOS).” BAIT still has 40 member CEOs who meet at least twice a year to network with each other.
Kar is an avid reader and he takes time out to read books on management, especially those which talk about building companies. ‘Tornado’ by Jeffrey Moore and ‘Crossing fault lines’ are two of his favourite reads. “I also enjoy reading books written by Bill Gates. I read at least one book every month,” he adds. Since his college days, Kar had the urge to become an entrepreneur.
From three professionals in the late nineties to managing a team of over a thousand professionals, Kar has definitely come a long way. “I have always believed in hiring good people and delegating work to them. So far, we have managed to develop a work culture which is devoid of any politics.” Entrepreneurs, according to Kar, are the key to Indian success in the field of IT. “If we look at the period between 1999-2000, we will realise that the industry churned out more CEOs during that period than in the ten years before that. This is because at that time VCs were not apprehensive about investing in start-ups. Today, after the bloodbath in the Internet space, it is difficult for start-ups to woo a VC.”
Kar is a member of the Chief Minister’s Task Force on IT in Karnataka and a Charter member of The IndUS Entrepreneurs (TiE), Bangalore Chapter. He is also on the Listing Committee of the National Stock Exchange.

The amazing success story of K B Chandrasekhar
K B ''Chandra'' Chandrasekhar, founder-CEO of Jamcracker Inc. Photograph: Sreeram Selvaraj


July 26, 2006The story of K B Chandrasekhar, founder-CEO, Jamcracker Inc, is highly inspirational. Especially, for all the enterprising young Indian men who desire to be successful entrepreneurs.
Chandra's journey started at Kumbakonam in Tamil Nadu where he was born, moving on to Trichy where he spent his early years, and then to Chennai where he did his school and college education, and finally to Silicon Valley in the United States.
It was at Silicon Valley that he struck gold. That too in a big way. It is the classic, modern-day story of a middle class young man-turned-multi-millionaire.
Chandra describes himself as "a serial entrepreneur and risk-taker who empowers others to accomplish their dream."
This is his story.
The Early Years
I come from a classic middle-class family: my grandfather, grandmother, father, mother... all living together in a joint family. Family values were strongly embedded into me as a result of this.
I was born in Kumbakonam, but was in Trichy till 1968. I did my schooling at Ramakrishna School in Chennai and then joined the Vivekananda College to do my BSc in physics because I couldn't get into engineering. In 1980, I got admission to the Madras Institute of Technology at Anna University.
I was not exposed to business of any sort, but my father, in those days, dabbled in shares. He encouraged me to have freewheeling discussions on various aspects of business. Those were the seventies, but I was given enough freedom to think freely. My parents were there all the time supporting me and encouraging me.
I didn't realise the value of it all then, but later on I understood the kind of impact those discussions had upon my thinking. More importantly, they encouraged me to take risks. In the eighties, when working in a public sector was considered safe, I was encouraged to go into a field that was uncharted, like computers.
I entered the world of computers very early, way back in 1983 when I joined Wipro. Wipro is an entrepreneurial company that gave me the opportunity to try out various things.
To the USA
In 1990, I moved to the US on a job assignment. Would I have the courage to start something on my own had I been in India? I think I would have done the same thing even if I was in India. Actually, I had packed my things to come back to India in 1992 because my wife and I decided we were going to do something on our own in Bangalore. It just happened that we got an opportunity to get started in the US itself.
What I mean is, the willingness to do something on my own has always been there. In 1983, I wrote a small business plan to create 'Casio calculator-based ticket punching machines' for bus conductors, and sent it to Casio. We even dabbled in starting companies by importing game kits from Korea and Taiwan for $1 a kit.
Somehow, those things did not click because of our middle-class background, not having the money, and also because of our inexperience.
I would have done business in India too, but probably not on the same scale. Indian companies had the benefit of time. If you look at some of the successful companies in India, you will see that it took them almost 20 years to reach the first $100 million. But when you are in the US, you don't have that luxury; you have to grow fast. The willingness to take risks was more there, and that I got because I was in the US.
I would not have had that courage if I was in India because I would have been more concerned about safety.
First venture: Fouress
When we had packed and were ready to come back to India, one of my friends at Sun Microsystems told me that he had a project. However, he wanted me to stay back and do it in the US. That was where my real entrepreneurial spirit came into play.
At that time, BFL and Mastech had just started. B V Jagadeesh, who had started BFL, was my colleague at Wipro. Jagadeesh and Sundar -- one of the founders of Mastech -- told me: 'Chandra, you do it. We will back you.'
I jumped at it with just $4,500 in my hand, and no capital. I leveraged on Jagadeesh and Sundar. We started Fouress, a software design company. I could do it because we had a great understanding, because we believed in each other and trusted each other.
We took the company from nothing to over a million dollars a year in the first two years.
I attribute my success mostly to my wife for her moral and physical support for standing by me and sacrificing everything. For several months, we used to live on basic food because we couldn't afford anything else. I need not have done it because I had an $80,000 job in my hand at that time. That means it was a self-inflicted pain, and that you cannot go through unless you are in it together.
Secondly, we were leading a nomadic life; we didn't have a car or a house. So, we were not stuck. I feel if I had gone to the US to study, I would not have done all this that quickly.
Starts Exodus Communications
By 1993-end, Jagadeesh joined me as a co-founder. We then started dreaming of building a bigger company, something that would be revolutionary. Internet had not started at that time but we started the Internet business in 1993 itself.
That means we were ahead of the times. Probably, we did not even realise the risk we were taking. By sheer chance, after we started, the Internet bloomed and we were in the right place at the right time.
Destiny and Kanwal Rekhi
I believe in destiny. Jagadeesh and I faced bankruptcy many a time; we borrowed money with no assets but we survived.
It was destiny which brought people like Kanwal Rekhi to us. He is one of the pioneer entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley. He started his first company in 1982 which went public in 1987.
By chance, I happened to go to a TiE (The IndUS Entrepreneurs) meeting and saw Kanwal Rekhi there. There were very few people there, so after the meeting I told him, 'I want to send you a business plan.' He wrote his fax number and gave it to me. I still remember it was in May 1995.
The very next day, I sent him a five-page executive summary of my business plan. There was no news from him for three months. One day, we get a voice mail from him saying that he wanted to come and see us. That was the biggest day of our life; somebody was willing to listen to us.
He came to our office and on the first day, he ripped us apart. Yes, our naivety showed in our business plan. But he saw that we were passionate, hungry, and willing to take all kinds of risks to make our idea successful.
Over the next two months, I used to talk to him at his house till late at night about my dreams; we were like Krishna and Arjuna. I still remember how I told him on a rainy day why he needed to support me. And he did. He gave us a cheque of $250,000.
Exodus Communications went public in 1998 and became one of the most successful IPOs (initial public offerings) of that year.
Jamcracker Inc
Jamcracker Inc is a continuation of Exodus Communications. Exodus created a utility for the infrastructure, while Jamcracker's role was very simple; IT as a utility. With that simple dream, we (Chandra, along with two MBA graduates from Stanford, Herald Chen and Mark Terbeek) started Jamcracker Inc in 1999.
We struggled initially, but today Jamcracker has become a leader in on-demand IT as a utility.
For rural India
I started doing something for rural India with n-Logue because I saw a big divide between urban and rural India. The question was 'how do we ensure that the masses are able to get the benefits of IT?' I was not doing it as charity because I don't believe in charity for charity's sake.
Our 1-year-old company Akshaya -- which is doubling every quarter -- was created as a combination of communication and people on the ground. The biggest satisfaction to me is that I have been able to establish some innovative methods in how we settle payments between transactions in rural set-ups, the way we are able to aggregate smaller volumes into larger volumes, how we do branding and create a larger distribution system. We are slowly telling the farmers, 'why don't you do it this way? We can do a lot more in productivity.' My role in this is that of a fulfiller.
Indians, crabs?
Indians were referred to as 'crabs' because we were not known for helping each other. People always said two Indians would never help each other. But today whatever I am, is because of an Indian. I have been helped globally also. My first $200,000 loan was given by a Pakistani.
I always tell budding entrepreneurs; 'Don't think if you don't have money, you cannot do anything. All you need is a big dream! And the willingness to give up everything in the pursuit of that dream. Others will take a risk with you only if you are totally committed to your dream.'
Indians, cautious?
In our upbringing, we are always told, 'be careful, be careful.' Rather than, 'go, try and let there be failure.' We are a savings-oriented economy, not a spending-oriented economy. We are always worried about tomorrow. That maybe because opportunities were limited for us.
Indians, innovators?
Absolutely. Innovations were pulled back because of the system that prevented us from taking the risk. That is why when Indians go to other places they are willing to take risks. It has nothing to do with our nature; it is the environment. But it is changing quite a bit now, especially in the past five years.
I set up the Anna University-K B Chandrasekhar Research Centre and also an incubator -- at the Chrompet-based Anna University campus which is not at all flashy -- just to prove that the best brains are available here, and we are capable of producing world-beaters. The name of the incubator translating technology to commercial products is svapas (www.svapas.com).
I want to prove that Indian innovation can be marketed globally. We have a great future. My motto is, 'you be the thinker of what the world needs and not do what others tell you to do.'
Why a research centre at Anna University?
I believe that India will become the knowledge capital of the world. If that has to happen, we need world-class research. India had research but it was done within the four walls of various institutes.
Another reason why I started the centre is because of my love for my alma mater. I want to set an example that your alma mater matters and educational institutions have a larger role beyond churning out students into becoming centres of excellence for future.
And I was willing to show that with my cheque book, my time, commitment and willingness to plough through it during tough times.
We are launching the first two start-ups in the next few weeks.
Marketing
I believe this country needs strong roots in marketing for it to become a global leader. That is why I have started -- along with Dr Bala V Balachandran -- the Great Lakes Institute of Management in Chennai.
I am establishing a chair for marketing at the Institute and as the first step, we have Dr Philip Kotler, the guru of marketing, on a one week visit to India (See: India is on a roll: An exclusive chat with Philip Kotler).
So, I am looking at everything as an ecosystem. Doing one thing and not having the follow-up will only destroy what you have done before. Everything -- education, research, marketing -- is interlinked.
Asia, a giant in IT
I believe Asia will soon be the giant in the field of IT, but at the same time we can't be complacent because you have got regions like Eastern Europe from where great innovations like Skype are coming. You will see that in the future, innovations will come not from the US alone but outside of the US also.
And, India will become a very important place for innovation.
China and India
Together, India and China will become major global players. China and India also will become competitive and also increasingly collaborative.
You will see three ecosystems developing in the future: the Asian Ecosystem, the European Ecosystem and the American Ecosystem (not North America alone, but South America too). These three ecosystems will compete and collaborate.