Desicritics Category: BizTech: Entrepreneurship

Gems of the Planet: Infinite Vision

Somik Raha — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 07:25:36 EST

In the fourth installment of the Gems of the Planet series for Desicritics (others were on Krishnammal, Sandhya and Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak), we embark on the incredible and inspiring story of Dr. Govindappa Venkataswamy, or Dr. V as many called him.

Dr. V grew up in a village in Tamil Nadu, and was inspired to become an obstetrician, after being deeply saddened as a child to see a lady next door pass away during childbirth. He joined the army as a medical officer, but was discharged after contracting rheumatoid arthritis, that left his fingers permanently crippled. That is when he came into the field of eye surgery, and then went on to perform more than 100,000 successful surgeries.

After working as a government eye doctor for all his professional life, he retired at the mandatory age of 58. Unlike so many others who feel they are done with life, for Dr. V, life was just beginning. He decided to tackle the problem of needless blindness, or cataracts. A simple sight-restoring surgery can fix the problem. Yet, due to lack of access to healthcare, millions in India live blind, and are unable to feed themselves. Dr. V started an 11-bed clinic to tackle this, and called it Aravind, after Rishi Aurobindo, whose philosophy deeply inspired him.

He also encouraged, trained and coached his family members to get into the field of eye care with him, and several members of his family served at Aravind when it first began (and are still with it). In the beginning, as he went around doing fundraising, people were unkind and suspicious, and thought he wanted the money to lead an easy retired life. Dr. V was deeply offended by that, and determined not to ask for donations, and instead serve people with whatever he had. His belief was that if value was created, money would automatically come for expanding their work.

As part of their operation, Aravind does not charge those who cannot afford surgery. Paying patients cover the cost of two patients who cannot pay. Both paying and non-paying patients would get the same level of eye care from the doctors. However, after the surgery, paying patients would get their own AC rooms with TVs, while non-paying patients would be put up in dorms. This unique mix happened right from the beginning, and their entire system was optimized to handle large volumes of patients. This is a unique factor that distinguishes Aravind from other philanthropic eye-care ventures - Aravind does not take any donations and is entirely sustainable from their service to paying patients.

Not only did this model work extremely well, Aravind also made enough money to invest in R&D, through which, they were able to reduce the cost of an intra-ocular lens from $200 to $5. Today, these lenses are exported to various countries around the world to help others bring down their eyecare costs.

One of Aravind's big strengths is their paramedic team, which comprises of women who are recruited from villages and trained. One of the criteria for hiring is that the women should have had someone to serve at home (like parents), thus implying that they knew what service was about. The paramedics absorb the time needed for many tasks that don't require a surgeon's attention.

Today, Aravind Eye Hospitals are known for the largest volume of eye surgeries anywhere in the world. Their care is considered world-class, and foreign interns often come to get experience and learn. Its headquarters are in Madurai, but they have additional hospitals at Theni, Thirunelveli, Coimbatore and Pondicherry.

All of this success, I feel, is not because of their external strategy, which is open-source and known to all. They don't consider the other eye-hospitals as competitors. Instead, their goal is to remove the problem of needless blindness, and they see all other eye hospitals as partners in this goal. They help these hospitals make their operations more efficient. Recently, they have moved to managing hospitals in the north and bringing their famous efficiency with them.

The big factor that underlies this tremendous success is their focus on service as their spiritual mission, which in India, many people would know as karma yoga. By understanding that the patient's suffering is their own suffering, they take medical care to spiritual heights. And the universe responds as it is bound to, for what goes around comes around. Paying patients are attracted to this hospital not because of their philanthropy (Dr. V forbade using this to attract patients, so it was not mentioned), but because the doctors had tremendous experience and gave great value. When the volition of service is pure and non-violent, the mind becomes calm and joyful and is able to recognize the way forward with great clarity. All strategies necessary for success become evident.

Today, Aravind's management style is the subject of case studies in the leading business schools of the west (see Harvard Case Study). Not a single member of the original founding team has left the organization. What's more, three generations of this family have helped this work in some way or the other.

Dr. V passed away in the year 2006. His life has been immortalized on film by his granddaughter, Pavi Mehta, in her award-winning film, "Infinite Vision." George Bernard Shaw famously stated, "The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him. The unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." In a sense, Dr. V fit this description really well as one of his colleagues stated in the film, "His vision of what was possible was way beyond what was anything reasonable." Watch Infinite Vision below:

One tip - watch till the end after the credits - there is more footage and a lovely quote from Dr. V. (While the entire film can be watched for free above, you can also get a high-quality Infinite VisionDVD on Amazon.)

Since the film, Aravind has grown in leaps and bounds, and here is a recent TED-talk by Aravind's current Managing Director, Thulasiraj Ravilla, that is not only eye-opening, but also shows several innovations (when did you last hear of telemedicine being used to help the rural population in India?).
TED is a conference that brings together thought leaders from the fields of Technology, Entertainment and Design, and the best of the talks at the conference go up for free at ted.com.

To end, I loved the quote that Dr. V cited in the film,
"Intelligence and capability are not enough. There must be the joy of doing something beautiful."

Financial Independence and Freedom for Men

Sumanth — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 10:04:51 EST

Many men dream of being financially free. Many dream of quitting their jobs to travel around the world, spend time with friends and family and start new ventures and do what they would love to do. Most people have read the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. Some young men in 20s declare, “I want to take a retirement or break from work when I turn 35. Maybe, I will set up a company at that time.” I was one such guy. Sometime in 1999, I declared that I want to be financially free in a couple of years, when I had almost no literacy in personal finance or financial instruments.

So, how does one go about creating financial freedom and personal wealth? Being a miser is not the right way.

The process starts with introspection and getting in touch with reality. One has to start with a clear idea about one’s expenses in a month called cash outflow. Cash outflow can include the house rent, the bills, the travel expenses, cost of food and household items, medical expenses, children school fees, donations to charities etc. Most people meet these expenses by working in a full time job. A man is considered financially free, if he is capable of earning his monthly expenses (cash outflow) via his passive income. Passive income is the money a person makes without working, say by investments or being a non-working partner in a business etc.

In some families both spouses work, however we keep those situations aside for the sake of simplicity and focus only on an unmarried working men or a married men with wife playing the role of home maker.

Having good passive income and having financial freedom is inspiring to men. However, most do not know how to reach there. Many assume it is a function of their salary in the current job and start working harder to get a promotion, a bigger salary hike or an opportunity to work in US or Europe. They get stuck. Some go aggressively into stock markets and buy stocks recommended by friends without doing research on their own. They end up with bad experiences.

The first key to increasing passive income is to be financially literate. That is, one must get educated with financial instruments and learn the long term trends and patterns of real estate or stock markets etc. This literacy is a must before one gets into action. One can also start experimenting with small amounts of money in order to learn.

Financial freedom depends on a person’s net worth. If a person has a high net worth compared to his monthly income and also expenses, then his chance of being financially free is high. So, the first step towards financial freedom is to increase one’s net worth by shifting one’s attitudes towards life, expenses, money and investments.

If you had invested Rs.100,000/- in a simple index mutual fund in year 2003, instead of taking a honeymoon trip to Mauritius, you would have 6 lacs more net worth today. Just ten such decisions would have made your family sit on top of 60 lacs today, earning passive income of about Rs.60,000/- per month for your family.

I did not buy a car in 2003.

The moods, feelings and emotional highs and lows are the biggest enemies of financial freedom. Unless you are ready to take it as a game without high degree of detachment, you can forget about financial freedom. Well, good things in life come with some discomforts and sacrifices. So, have patience and enjoy.

Recently, many young guys are asking me, “Should I buy an apartment? I am getting married after 6 months and my parents are pestering me to settle down and buy a house. My friend bought a house costing 40 lacs rupees. Well, I also see that I can save Rs.50,000/- tax on interest that I pay for my home loan.”
Now, these guys save hardly 2 or 3 lacs in a year from their salary and they are getting ready for a house loan of Rs.30 lacs apart from completely emptying their bank accounts for paying rupees 10 lacs to the bank as down payment. The loan EMI itself is more than 3 lac rupees in a year.

It’s most often a bad decision. To pay the 3 lacs EMI, these guys literally starve themselves. They live on curd rice, when they go onsite (to US or Europe) for an assignment so that they can clear off this loan as early as possible. Buying a house to stay is the first mistake and the next big mistake is to attempt to pay up the entire loan early by putting more hours at work sacrificing other important things in life.

A house gives about 5% returns on investment in India. A house is not an asset, it is a liability. Buying a house costing Rs.40 lacs is as good as staying in a house worth about Rs.40,000/ per month, while great apartments, better than that dream house, are available for rent for as low as Rs.18,000/- and one also get tax breaks on the rent that one pays.

A man can dump his dreams of financial freedom to dustbin, if he buys a house. A house can wait till one is financially free. It’s all about being strong against wishes of parents and peer pressure and tell them straight, “You will not take away choices in my life; I work hard for my well being”. The other way to get them off your back is to ask them to contribute half of the cost of the house for a joint registration. Most parents will back off with this counter offer. Forget about the tax breaks you get from interest on loan. That’s a trap set up by government to push you into lifelong slavery and insecurity.

However, one can always invest in real estate as an individual or together with friends. Here, the male bonding really helps. Buying real estate involves research, legal verifications and price negotiations. This works when it is done as a team.

However, here is a ground rule regarding buying real estate as an investment. Never buy real estate (say land/sites/plots) thinking that it will appreciate in future. Buy real estate, if you find it cheap and if you are fine even if it does not appreciate. In India, people who bought real estate taking small loans in 2002-2005 did make good money out of it. This pattern has now shifted to tier II and tier III cities. Real estate can make one boost one’s net worth. If you had purchased a site worth rupees 10 lacs in Bangalore in 2003 by taking a loan of rupees 7 lacs, then today you may have increased your net worth by about 40 lacs.

If one lives in US, it makes great sense to buy a house at USD 300,000 during recession rather than succumbing to pressure from wife and ending up buying a house at USD 600,000 during a boom. In 2009, the prices of houses in many places in US have dropped to almost 50% of their peak price in 2007. However, this situation and trend has not yet come to house prices in India.

I have seen Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) guys speaking about passive income. However, MLMs seem dirty and tiring, when Indians are involved.

If you have patents or have written books which generate royalties, those also add to your passive income.

Once a person has high net worth compared to his monthly expenses, all he has to do to create passive income, is to shift a portion of that wealth to create some rental income (say commercial rentals) or get returns from investments into businesses and stock markets. If you have a net worth of Rupees one crore (about quarter million USD), then one can have an annual passive income of rupees 8 to 10 lacs easily.

Having financial freedom can help one get into a fast track towards capitalising on one’s ideas and opportunities. If you still work, then you will do it as a choice and not as a compulsion. You can switch to careers, which may not be high paying, but more fulfilling. You can take breaks from work to go on a long holiday with family or take on studying for another degree in a different field. All this will add years to your happy life and will create prosperity and happiness for your family.

It requires an internal paradigm shift to achieve financial freedom. The keys to financial freedom do not exist in outside world, for example one’s salary. The keys lie in one’s internal belief system and the way a person is hardwired to his relationship with money. When a person shifts this paradigm of thinking and attitudes, he slowly starts journey towards financial freedom. Robert Kiyosaki has a game called cashflow101, which makes ones overcome some of these internal barriers and decision making habits that stop us from being financially free.

For many people, investment in markets or real estate is risky business. Well, not taking risks in life is the most risky way to live life.

So, the keys to financial freedom are:
1. Declare your intentions about your future net worth, when you are financially free. Be clear about the time frame. For example, declare, if 1 crore (USD quarter million) created in next 5 years makes you financially free.
2. Stick to your intention even if it appears impossible. Declarations are powerful and they open new possibilities and opportunities.
3. Reduce wasteful expenditure. Do not listen to moods, feelings and emotions.
4. Do not buy a house to stay.
5. Invest in stock markets and/or real estate for long term after sound research.
6. Play Cashflow game (board or software) by Robert Kiyosaki with friends or family.(link)
7. Spend some time learning fundamental and technical analysis, if you are investing in stock markets.
8. Develop contrarian skills and be independent in thinking.

Warnings:

Do not get into buying futures or options looking for quick bucks, if you are a beginner. You will get enough time to experiment with all these beautiful instruments as you grow up. Have patience.

Do not listen to your broker or investment banker. Most of them are incompetent losers, with bad finances of their own. Dictate terms to them and avoid being nice and considerate to their persistent requests.

Realise that Market news channels like CNBC and NDTV profit are basically a kind of entertainment channels even if they get best fund managers to give opinions. I often do opposite of what these news channels recommend. My investment banker and stock brokers hate me.

Soft Infrastructure Development: Role of Private Sector

Sathya — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 02:47:27 EST

The important role that investment in infrastructure plays particularly in the context of an emerging economy is uncontested. Investments in hard infrastructure have seen much mention in public discourses and do need substantial investments as the nation's saunters towards the path of development.

The magnitude of investments in hard infrastructure like roads, railways and port connectivity automatically enhances the interest in the same and allows for greater focus. However, soft infrastructure is the regulatory frameworks, the belief systems, the financial structures and talent pools that form the foundation on which investments in hard infrastructure can yield multiplier effects in the nation's economic scorecard. A popular line of thought holds that soft infrastructure precedes hard infrastructure and investments in soft infrastructure can generate and attract the capital resources necessary to build hard infrastructure.

Developing nations like ours have seen acute deficiencies in some of the soft infrastructural variables. For instance, in synchronizing the talent pool and the labour market pool - We have been unable to convert our human capital surfeit into demonstrable competitive advantage. A prime reason for this is lack of adequate training structures that can attempt to match the needs of the labour market with the supply and provide the same as training. The abject state of neglect of some of our Industrial Training Institutes(ITIs) speak volumes of the mismatch between what the industry demands and what we can provide.

Soft Infrastructure for long has been equated with social infrastructure and the onus on developing the same remained with the governmental and in the public sector. However, we have argue that private sector investments in this sector create a far more transformative impact than what depending on the public sector alone would have. Also, the investments by the private sector in building soft infrastructure need not necessarily borne out of altruistic motives and can directly benefit the private sector in terms of enhancing operational effectiveness, driving legitimacy and providing risk mitigation structures.

Role of Fab India in integrating its suppliers into umbrella organizations on the lines of cooperatives has structure the chaotic supplier ecosystem.(the local handicrafts, weavers and artisans). The long term sustainability and economic and social well being of this community of suppliers has a direct bearing on the economic well being of Fab India. To this end, the company has been providing training, financial assistance and has put in place an umbrella organization in which the main stakeholders are the artisans and weavers who have equity stakes in these organizations.

The role of ITC's e-choupal initiative in creating a vibrant farming community, improvement and creation of efficient sourcing structures including information transparency and the elimination of middle-men resulting in economic profits directly moving towards the farmers has been well documented.

Another of ITC's initiatives - social forestry by its paper boards business has directly managed to impact the lives of over 70,000 tribal. The tribal have benefited from the economic gains from the high yielding plant varieties supplied by ITC which with its investment on R&D has provided high yield, disease resistance and a shorter harvest cycle - resulting in more guaranteed cash flows for the tribal. For ITC these initiatives have helped in securing supplies for its paper business, helped obtain legitimacy and the same time has helped it become net carbon positive with over 100,000 hectares of plantations.

While both the above examples have been on the supply side, an example of an organization which has innovated on soft infrastructural investments on the demand side is Selco-Solar. Working out of Karnataka, the company has increased the adoption of solar energy systems particularly in the rural areas with deficit power supply. The company in addition to working on product innovations has also worked on financial innovation and intermediation between banks and the rural customers working efficiently to ensure access to capital is not a limiting factor when the rural poor try to adopt solar energy in a quest to enhance productivity. Some of the beneficiaries of Selco's efforts have been the Beedi producers in Puttur(D.K), Areca nut farmers in Sirsi and the silk farmers of Bellary.

In summary, investments in soft infrastructure are drivers of economic and social growth along with investments in hard infrastructure. Soft infrastructure systems precede hard infrastructure and are engines of social transformation. What has for long considered a domain of the governmental action can and should be opened up to private participation and investment - for reasons not necessarily altruistic.

(This Article is the conclusion of a detailed study done by the author as a part of his coursework at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore)

The Writer's Dilemma - Print Or Online Publishing?

Deepti Lamba — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 13:15:40 EDT

I am now half way through the second half of my novel and part of me has already decided that my baby will not be accepted in the print world and its best I show my baby to the online world where I am most comfortable. It matters little to me that I could finally say that I am a 'published print' writer when someone asks me the uncomfortable question - so what do you do? Or have my relatives tell their relatives and friends that they have a writer in the family as if by that connotation they too would become famous.

Getting tons of money due to my writing would be good as would a villa somewhere in Brussels, but those are pipe dreams. Not all of us can reach the heights of Salman Rushdie, Stephen King, Steven Erickson and though the list of successful writers is never ending, the list of those who slip by into oblivion precedes the lucky ones who reach the skies and have hordes rushing to book stores to read their work.

I don't envy these giants. Fact is, I wish them success since reading is a dying activity and publishing houses don't make as much money as they used to. People don't read any more. Somehow people are now suffering from mass ADD. Everything is quick fix- be it entertainment, food and even sex. Leisure activities like putting your legs up to read and letting the day roll by is indulged by few. And for this reason alone I am grateful to J.K Rowling. She got many youngsters hooked to reading. She's been a life saver for most of us writers.

Publishing houses are known to be picky when it comes to accepting new authors and even if a book does get published what an average author makes barely covers a month's rent. Not everyone gets the 6 or even 5 digit advances. It is a well known fact that most authors cannot live by weaving stories. A day job is a necessity if one doesn't want to suffer for art's sake or sell their kidney.

In the online world, however, it is easier. There are no letters of rejection and there are sites available which publish works of all types of genres and their readership is into hundreds if not thousands as is the case with ASSTR. Even Amazon has woken up to the potential of online publishing.

There are also sites like Smashwords where the writer can either give his book away for free or set the price of his book which can be then downloaded. Smashwords now powers the Sony Publisher Portal, increasing their reach many-fold. Further enhancing the appeal of electronic publishing, Tina Brown's Daily Beast has launched a new imprint in collaboration with Perseus Publishing, Beast Books, that will roll into print writers from the Daily Beast on a faster timeline (months) than that typically promised by traditional publishing houses. Published authors like Cory Doctorow are open enough to give away their books, while still achieving success with print publishing.

Of course there are many writers who aren't inclined to follow this new path and would rather see some concrete proof of their toil and then then there are lazy nut jobs like me who like living in the online world and find readers even in hard to reach places like Multan or Rwanda. I've had readers mailing me from all over the world and I get both hate and fan mail.

This is the high I've been living on for past five years without needing a print publisher to give me my fix and if one happens to be a regular on social networking sites, word reaches out even faster.

Do I need the money? Yes, of course, I do but the likelihood of getting there via print media seems pretty dim, and as I meet more online gods of the written word, the less I am inclined to want to be creating just another book lying in some dusty corner of a second hand bookstore. I have better chances of reaching out to thousands via the online world.

Would I still write a cover letter and send my manuscript to the big publishing houses or let the world have it for free? I guess I will know once I finish my novel. Until then its a whole lot of dreaming and hogwash.

Delhi Needs Dr. Shetty

Somik Raha — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 08:38:55 EDT

In the cacophony of political news lies a story of hope, although couched in despair. The Hindustan Times ran a piece titled, "Delhi does not want me, says top doctor."

The "top doctor" in question is none other than Dr. Devi Shetty, the founder of Narayan Hrudayalay, which provides world-class heart care to all, regardless of ability to pay. They've been in the news several times, performing heart surgeries for children across the world, notably Pakistani baby Noor Fatima. The hospital attracts patients for its top-quality health care, and makes enough money to subsidize poor patients heavily or charge nothing. According to the HT article, they have now tried introducing a Rs. 5 insurance scheme in Karnataka for folks who couldn't normally afford professional heart-care.

Dr. Devi Shetty has talked about his inspiration in an interview. Mother Teresa, when under his care, saw a baby go blue in the face with a particular heart condition. She then said to him, "Now I know why you are here. To relieve the agony of children with heart disease, God sent you to this world to fix it".

One short touch of inspiration and a person finds his goal in life. Dr. Shetty is much needed in Delhi, but I wish he would not run to the government for support. Surely, there are enough philanthropists who have their land rotting and would rather have him build a world-class heart facility on it. There are also better ways of gaining an insurance subscription than forcing it on the electricity bill. For instance, what about letting people buy health insurance for Rs. 5 along with their SIM cards? We don't have to force people to buy their SIMS or cellphones, we don't have to explain to them why cellphones are good for them. If we give people a great deal on insurance, that should sell by itself.

Instead of trying to convince the existing hospitals (or businesses) to be ethical, we need to convince ethical folks like Dr. Shetty to get into business. Instead, our entire effort has been to ask for more laws so that the 5% unethical folks are controlled, thereby putting roadblocks in front of the other 95%. There is a huge opportunity in India as there are so many pains. A massive waste of talent is with the large number of NGOs (lakhs now?) who spend a lot of time lobbying government instead of finding solutions (but what do you do, when the government is the problem?).

Hopefully, some entrepreneur somewhere will get inspired to help Dr. Shetty setup in New Delhi and wherever else he wants to go.

Book Review: Imagining India by Nandan Nilekani

Anuradha Goyal — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 10:44:05 EDT

Nandan Nilekani is someone I admire, someone I know a bit having worked in Infosys during the days when he was the CEO. After reading Imagining India, I want to write this letter to him.

Dear Nandan,

I just finished reading your book on Imagining India, which you have structured around various ideas: ideas that worked, that did not work, ideas that are still in process and some ides that must be explored, experimented and implemented. We are all familiar with most of these ideas, some by virtue of our education and some by virtue of the hyper active media in the country.

For someone like you who has been at the forefront of the revolution that swept India in the last couple of decades or so, there is so much that can and you must share with the world and especially with young Indians. Here are some of the things that I can suggest, but I am sure there are many more:

1. How to build a brand from scratch?

I think one of Infosys’ biggest contribution to India is the creation of a brand whose roots are purely Indian, but it is as global as it can be. You created a brand at a time when there was no known global brand that came from India, and you did build this brand consciously. You made sure the quality of your services provides the base for the brand that is strengthened by the right mix of PR and media relations. You created the brand by focusing on the aspects that were usually ignored by Indian corporations till Infosys brought them in fashion. You created a brand around values that had deep roots in India and around human capital that not many at that time looked at as asset. You created a brand that commands respect above everything else.

2. How to create the supply base where none exists?

You created a system to convert all kinds of engineers into software engineers. There was huge opportunity for Indian software industry, but the education system in the country did not even produce 1% of the engineers with required skill sets. Most people would have taken this as a bottleneck and backed out. But you started the trend of taking bright engineers from all branches and then putting them through a university like course, to convert them into software engineers like an alchemist. There are arguments for and against this. But to me this was a great move probably the biggest innovative idea that created today’s Indian IT industry or the so called the IT dream. But for this innovation, everything else might have failed.

3. How to achieve scale without diluting the core?

One of the important success factors for Infosys has been its ability to scale without diluting the values and the ways it operated. It maintained its middle class culture while dealing with the best and some of the most flamboyant personalities and companies. You must share how to scale up in such a way that the whole organization is geared up for the next level of scale, how to sync up the scale of various aspects of the organization and that too on a continuous basis.

4. How to groom yourself for handling this scale?

Not many people realize that while you were building this organization, you must have constantly groomed and prepared yourself for handing the bigger challenges, managing the current organization while laying down the vision for the next one. I remember in one of the quarterly town halls you said ‘Guys, help me, I am also learning to handle a billion dollar organization’ Now it must have been a challenge to prepare yourself for handling something that grew far beyond your own dreams. Share with is how to dream big and constantly keep improving the size of your dreams. There would be lot of stories and learnings that you must share with the future leaders so that they can learn from your experience.

5. How to use PR effectively without spending a fortune?

I think a tool that Infosys has used extremely effectively during its growth trajectory and continues to do so, is using positive PR through variety of media. Whatever you did differently or innovatively was used to put the company in the right light, be it training the support staff, be it airlifting the employees during hurricanes, be it hiring the graduates from ivy league colleges and making them work from Bangalore, be it campus connect or be it building the world class campus. I think PR was always used very intelligently which not many organizations do.

6. How not to let the limitations of your environment limit your dreams?

You created a world class campus right in the middle of mess. You competed with and challenged the best in the world, when most Indians thought they can not do so, when the business environment in the country was not really supportive. Tell us what drove you, what gave you confidence and what kept you going. Tell us the course corrections you took to adjust to the external environment and tell us what worked in your favor and what limited you.

As I was writing this post, news of you handling the Unique ID project came in, I am sure you are happy to take on that responsibility as you have advocated the need of UID throughout your book.

Wish you all the best for the new role where you would have new challenges to handle and I am sure new heights to be defined. I would love to work with you again sometime somewhere.

Thanks & Regards
Anuradha

Nandan Nilekani to Become Chairman of Unique Identification Authority of India

Ganadeva Bandyopadhyay — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 21:06:37 EDT

With the news of accepting the challenge of being the Chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India(UIDAI), a Cabinet Minister ranking post, Nandan Nilekani adds another notable milestone in his eventful career.

He is one of the few leaders in contemporary corporate India with a grasp on a wide range of issues tackled by present day India. With the invitation to Nandan, the current Indian PM has made the best possible effort for this important project. In the times of terrorism and internal disturbances affecting our part of the world, identification of citizens is one of the essential tasks before the government. This is in addition to the day to day administrative requirements for unique identification for the purposes of issuing voter id cards and running schemes like the Nehru rozgar yojana, etc. On closer introspection of the concept of the UIDAI, it would be better for the average public to know the flaws of the current identification and documentation systems followed by Government of India requiring the establishment of this new body.

Without a doubt, the experience of raising, managing and giving direction to one of the globally prominent Indian IT players,namely Infosys raises high expectations from Nandan as well as increases the profile of this project.

Nandan Nilekani was put into public glare of average Indian and not just the India techie with the publication of the recent book Imagining India. There was this type of question question frequently asked by the audience on talk shows of various Indian channels wherever Imagining India was discussed and that is why are the brightest corporate minds not involving themselves with governance.

After proving his understanding in depth and breadth of the problems plaguing India since Nehruvian times from the impressive book, one of the bold next steps is the current one taken by Nandan Nilekani. With high caliber technocrats like Nandan Nilekani and Montek Singh Ahluwalia and a career diplomat like Shashi Tharoor getting into important government positions, the current PM has made the intentions clear of tackling the problems typical to Indian conditions with the best possible foot forward.

Some of the biggest problems to be tackled undoubtedly remain the growth of the peace processes and mutual interaction among the shared cultures rent apart by problems of terrorism and internal security in South Asia,the small trickle of high quality research and development, the stench emanating from the water-tap type of higher education system with millions of bright students getting slotted within less number of high quality institutions, the throttling of competition within education instead of letting competition improve the education process.

One can only hope such imaginative and bold steps by leaders of non-political fields such as Nandan Nilekani herald the long-awaited arrival of a developed country and region onto the global stage.

Book Review: The Google Way

Ganadeva Bandyopadhyay — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 08:31:08 EDT

The Google Way gives an insight into the fascinating story of Google. With its unconventional approach towards not only Internet search, which is its core business, but in many other business and technology processes forming essential part of the modern enterprise, Google has indeed been a trend-setter.

Going through the book, it appears that Google seems to have a thoroughly researched, many-a-time counterintuitive and analytical approach not only in its core business of Internet search but also covering business management and strategy, technology, the industry-academic interactions and positive use of the rapidly evolving Internet society as integral parts of its growth as a corporate entity.

Some of the interesting discussions in the book are centered around the unique reasons for rapid growth of technology enterprises on the West coast of the United States. These include legal and academic specialties of the region as well as the strong drive for entrepreneurship starting from higher education institutions.

Some of the unconventional ways of Google highlighted by the author include the triumvirate of management at the top, using OpenIPO method to go public, the cost-per-click advertising model, having small team sizes, uncommon recruitment practices and employee benefits.

The fourth and last section speculates about the challenges and risks based on the author's knowledge and experience until our present recessionary times. These include cultural and national concerns, confidence and privacy concerns or something on the management side like the effect of loss of one person at the top , out of the triad of Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt, among others.

The author has presented a well-researched book which would help corporates and educationists in developing the academia-industry linkages as well as looking the relevance of current course content in business schools. Book is recommended as a must read not only because of its management and technological utility but also to get a sense of the direction that our immediate future will take.

The Pirate Bay Founders Sentenced in Landmark Copyright Infringement Case

Aaman Lamba — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 08:14:19 EDT

The founders of the torrent tracker, the Pirate Bay, were sentenced to a year of prison time and hefty fines by a Swedish court on 'aiding copyright infringement' under a new law, even as they vowed to appeal the verdict, calling it

Peter Sunde, Carl Lundström, Frederik Neij and Gottfrid Svartholm Warg had jointly run the site, originally set up by anti-copyright organization, Piratbyrån in 2003. They had steadfastly maintained their defense as more of the technology rather than illegal file-sharing. The trial had drawn much attention and a carnival-esque atmosphere around and even in the courtroom.

While this verdict will likely not affect file-sharing in any significant way, it will have two pernicious effects - the further metastasizing of the peer-to-peer sharing mechanisms into harder to control architectures, and worse, the chilling effects on the general populace.

A note posted on the Pirate Bay site, termed Press Conference Here, expressed mirth at the verdict, saying,

So, the dice courts judgement is here. It was lol to read and hear, crazy verdict.

But as in all good movies, the heroes lose in the beginning but have an epic victory in the end anyhow. That's the only thing hollywood ever taught us.

Technorati Tags: Pirate Bay, news, Torrents

Book Review: Masterminds of Programming

Ganadeva Bandyopadhyay — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 22:11:23 EDT

Masterminds of Programming is a thoroughly illuminating read in a series of conversations of creators of 17 programming languages. Among the languages whose creators share their insights in this book, include C++, Python, Java, Awk, Perl,etc.

The beginning chapters in this book are bringing out mainly the technical and sometimes, business requirements which have manifested as the research ecosystems. Each of the chapter gives an almost unique perspective of the respective creator(s) which grew through the different versions of the language and its implementation. It makes for a truly fascinating reading as we go through the each of the conversations which leaves us more enriched and motivated in our understanding of the programming languages.

There is this interesting discussion between Eisenhower and Kennedy mentioned in the chapter on Postscript about preferring digital to analog communications which led to the governmental push for research via ARPA/DARPA into many of the information technology marvels until now.

One of the recurring themes that comes out across the book is the dedication of these creators to share their experiences with the technical educational system in the form of teaching entire subjects and/or guiding the project dissertations.

While going through this book, a particular point of interest for Indians and others coming from the South Asian region of polyglots can be absence of any programming language of widespread importance getting evolved from our natural experiences and the study of mathematics in our universities. This maybe ascribed to the nature of the educational ecosystems in our region with arguably some of the most bureaucratically controlled technical institutions and various other reasons. Maybe a more spontaneous education system maybe the need of the hour.

The book is an essential read for whosoever is the active participant in the IT industry. Many parts of this book are strongly relevant for encouraging the spirit of continuing innovation and research by upcoming information technology specialists. At the very least the programmer for the respective language can grasp some of the creator(s)'s philosophy driving its key concepts.