Monday, September 17, 2012

Small is Beautiful!


“The value of an idea lies in the using of it”, observed the great man who gifted mankind its first electric bulb. However, going by the rate of entrepreneurial ventures in our country, the given observation wouldn’t mean much. The ratio of MBA grads opting to start a company on their own is very insignificant. Why can’t two years of gruelling schedule at a premium B school with regular dosage of some fancy theories, tools and incisive analysis of land mark case studies prepare you to build your own dreams! I was about to find my answers in the next two eventful months.

We would now scroll back to the day where it all started, i.e. the first day of my summer internship program. With a spring in my step and butterflies in my stomach I got ready to report at the office at sharp 10.00 am. The sultry summers of Kolkata and the sight of buses loaded much beyond their “design capacity” somehow dampened the initial euphoria. Though I had been to Kolkata before but didn’t quite experience the public transport at the special (read office) hours. I was standing in a queue and when the bus came I got squeezed inside without moving a muscle. Fighting valiantly just to be able to stand inside the bus, I got some useful tips on what not to do while travelling in an overcrowded bus. Those actually came in very handy for the rest of internship days, more so because my work involved a lot of field trips.

The first glimpse of my new office was yet another dampener. It was a simple one situated in a quiet corner of a busy street. Neither had it the jazziness nor the impeccable interiors associated with an IT multinational. Here I would like to mention that before making a way into MBA, I had been a member of the elite Indian IT club (read a run-of-the-mill IT employee). Once inside the office, after the cursory introductions, I was briefed about the project and the stint began in full flow.

After the first week, I started getting a hang of the sweat and the heat. Moreover, neither the not-so-ideal bus ride nor the office settings mattered much. Those things which mattered were better than my expectations. The staff members at the office were very friendly and looked forward to any help I could ask for. From sharing lunch to celebrating birthdays to brainstorming sessions concerning the critical issues, we had it all.

I also got the taste of working in a flat organization, wherein you could just barge in to the rooms of senior management and get your lessons right. There is always the opportunity to get involved in various other facets of the organization apart from the project assigned. Although I was a marketing intern, but while working on my project, I had to constantly get my hands dirty with issues involving finance and core operations. At the risk of sounding clichéd, I would vouch for the fact that each day was a learning experience. Those two months probably gave me some of the best lessons of my life up till now.

An important prerequisite for my project was to meet as many prospective clients as possible. It involved usage of direct marketing through e-mails and phone calls for fixing up appointments I got to learn the hard way that time is the most important resource people have these days and making them squeeze out even a little part of it could be a herculean task. I suddenly started regretting all those encounters with sales persons’ wherein I had snapped or not behaved appropriately without any fault of theirs.

Going a step further, when you actually meet and interact with the target customers (herein comes the field trips and the frequent usage of the public transport), you realize no matter how well you know the product, their intricate queries might stumble you quite a few times. Also, when you don’t have a big brand name to fall back upon, chances are slim that they would actually listen to you in the ‘air time’ they allocate to you. The art of approaching people and getting them engaged in what you are talking is a big thing in itself. In due course of time, I could get the hint of improvements’ I was making with a significant difference in the manner in which the customers reacted and the end result of it.

Day in and day out we had to confront with a three faced sword, i.e. a start up company, minus a brand name, trying to make its mark in a sensitive sector like healthcare where trust is of utmost importance with a very novel product concept. But looking back, I realize that the hiccups we faced made the work more challenging and the takeaways’ and learning’s more concrete, giving in its wake, memories of a lifetime!

The internship experience at a start up taught me that the task of giving shape to your dreams and building it brick by brick is indeed very painstaking and involves considerable risk. This might be the reason why people decide to get hired by someone to build their dream instead of building their own. But as has been quoted by Dolly Parton, "The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you got to put up with the rain!”

Monday, September 5, 2011

Debt & Taxes in US - the Fallout for India!

Of the many prized possessions the U.S.A has had, its long term credit rating was surely a coveted one. It held on to its AAA S&P rating for around seventy long years. The turnaround came in the eventful year of 2007- 2008. After the housing bubble bust led to the ensuing subprime mortgage crisis and brought about the most talked about economic phenomenon of recent times, i.e., the Great Depression, the USA had to pump in trillion of dollars to rescue its Financial institutions of repute. The economists and doomsayers were skeptical alike whether the Sovereign bail out would be enough to bring back the US economy its lost sheen and prestige. But for the time being it seemed the only way out. This rendered some serious fracas on the economic ecosystem of the world’s most envied nation, the effects of which have scaled up over these years. The budget for this year showed a staggering $1.65 trillion deficit for the current fiscal year. The US national debt has increased, and touched $14.3 trillion in May.

Furthermore, the legislators at the helm of the world’s only superpower had no clue on how to cut on the spending and thereby reduce the sovereign debt. The Republicans were hell bent against raising the government’s borrowing limit. What followed was a fractious debate over various moot issues like, raising the nation’s debt ceiling, increasing the tax rates, measures to lessen the spending etc. All this ended in a hasty last minute compromise of raising the debt ceiling (to avert a debt default) by around $3 trillion that would reduce the country’s debt by more than $2 trillion (how this happens still remains a mystery!). This political pandemonium has had its effects on the S&P’s and if concrete measures are not taken, other rating agencies would follow the suit.
If we were to look at all these developments from India’s point of view, the picture does not look all gloomy. Of course, there is no denying the fact that the dollar depreciation would hurt Indian exports by making them less competitive, while cheaper imports will put pressure on domestic manufacturers. The data gathered suggests that Indian exports had declined sharply in the second half of 2008-09 owing to a slowdown in the US economy. The sector that seems to loose the most is the one that is the largest beneficiary of outsourcing (no prizes for guessing that!), i.e., the Great Indian IT sector. Also the Reserve Bank of India has cautioned that in the immediate future its priority will be to ensure that adequate rupee and forex liquidity are maintained to prevent excessive volatility in interest and exchange rates.
But there are also some rosily tinted facets to this turmoil. The slowing down of the world economy will definitely pull down the oil and gas prices which would cut the import bill for India (a great relief indeed!). Moreover, the growth of the country depends to a large extent on the domestic market. This kind of ensures a steady growth rate. Another round of Quantitative easing in the US (third in a row!) is very much on the cards. Every time this happens, some good amount of investments seems to find its way to the emerging markets like India. At the same time, there may be higher inflows of foreign institutional investor (FII) funds. This will lead to appreciation of the rupee, which in turn will help bring down the current account deficit. An obvious course of action for the global investors would be to consider diversifying their assets out of US treasuries. This can very much exert pressure on the dollar. There is also fear that some funds that are not allowed to hold any asset without an AAA rating might be forced to sell treasuries. Also India may not be as vulnerable as compared to China, Japan, Hong Kong or Brazil to loose on its forex portfolio from a spike in US interest rates, as only 13 per cent of its forex reserves are in US treasuries.
But to have all these goodies in our kitty, India needs a whole bunch of economic reforms. It’s high time we take advantage of these happenings and improvise on our BBB- debt rating status in the world. The government should sit up and take stock of it. The reforms should be in the areas of controlling inflation and reducing fiscal deficit; improving economic efficiency; ensuring equitable growth; thrust on education, health and sanitation; an additional three to four per cent investment on infrastructure; addressing issues of land acquisition, rehabilitation and resettlement; deepening policy reforms in the financial sector; addressing gaps in the overall economic regulatory architecture; and last but not the least, to the various environmental issues.

A Solemn Pledge!!

the reason em writing this is just because I need an update for this unattended and neglected blog of mine!! from now on its a solemn pledge of mine to keep it abreast..if you happen to proudly put a link of your blog on social networking sites and announce publicly that you are a blogger, then it becomes pertinent that you don't give it a step motherly treatment..

Thursday, December 25, 2008

Examination heroics!!

Date: 24.12.08

Time: 3.00 am

Scenario: I was studying feverishly for my last exam of the seventh semester…the syllabus was minuscule and the subject matter wasn’t troublesome…even after a study leave of good four days, my accrued know how of the subject was poor…I had to mug up things till the eleventh hour to be able to sit for the exam…

Conclusion: Either it seems that I seldom prefer to grasp things in a calm and composed atmosphere or the level of procrastination needs a serious check…

Usually the mood after semester exams is jovial…there are plenty of reasons to be…but this time it’s a bit tensed…though the impending result is not a concern…wo to jab aayega tab dekhi jayegi…the thing I m perturbed about is, where would my ever increasing levels of carelessness lead me unto…with each semester, the time frame allocated for the preparation stage is squeezing…this time it crossed all permissible limits...didn’t have a hint of diligence during the exams (“nhi aata hoga to bhi kya…kuch bhi likh aayenge, 30 to aa hi jayenge kisi tareh!”,sums up the attitude)…three and a half years into engineering have taught me the art of fatte bazi if not anything else (like say…you are being asked about a tree and u don’t have a clue…tie a goat to the tree and talk about the goat...lol!)...the way I would tackle the last semester really bugs me…kisi bhi improvement ka scope nhi bacha hai ab (farji engineers hi sahi but B.Tech 4 saal me to poori karni hi hai!)…its not a novel thing for an engineering student to study during the last few days before exams…but at least those few days are assumed to be utilized in an effective manner, to have a good understanding of the prescribed curriculum…here its an altogether different story…just a few days after the exam…the topics studied would revive a faint recollection and probably nothing else…

ye sab sochke to lagta hai...kari kyu engineering!!!

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Jasu ben Jayanti lal Joshi ki Joint family!!

If you aren’t an active member of the TV viewing fraternity odds are that you could have misread the title as another of those examples of alliteration… On the other hand, a couch potato would vouch for the fact that its one of the trendy soaps on a popular channel…A host of such shows with wacky names and even wackier themes have cropped up…Though the number of serials have risen exponentially, the quality has dug deep…There used to be a period, very much in the recent past, when soaps provided wholesome entertainment sans the melodrama and the routine song-dance sequences of typical bollywood potboilers…their USP being a shade closer to reality…but that was very much of the past…in the present scenario they are simply mediocre…going overboard with literally everything…be it the depiction of emotions or the background score…the success of a particular format paves the way for scores of others to follow in…the most striking one being Kyunki saas bhi kabhi bahu thi which made the saas- bahu sagas a rage…then came the reality shows…giving everybody a chance to fame even if for a brief time, never mind the person deserves it or not…they are supposed to be spontaneous but everything appears far too scripted…the news channels aren’t left much behind where over dramatization is concerned…watching TV has become an ordeal task…keep on surfing till you might accidentally stumble upon something pleasant…To surmise(of course with utmost dejection!) the idiot box has ceased to provide company, the way it once used to.

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Memories...

Human mind is arguably one of the most complex of all creations of nature…what exactly goes on in there is quite difficult to comprehend...we might claim to have a sound understanding of rocket science but the intricacies of the mind are hardly solved…the most fascinating part of the mind is the memory…a necessary evil indeed…needn’t say anything about the necessary part…that goes without saying…evil when it keeps on reminding you terrible things which you want to forget very badly…disappointments which keeps on growing with your age…indeed the worst part of life is that you have to live with disappointments all through…embarrassing moments, which you wish had never occurred in the first place…quite a few times I have felt that how would things be if we could just format our memories…acchi yaadein samhaal ke rakh do aur baaki nikal ke pheko bahar…infact that’s the one supernatural power I would like to possess the most…if that could happen…things would get a lot more pleasant I guess…

Thursday, October 4, 2007

DAY DREAMING !!!

Finally got the scope of updating my blog...actually was quite busy…finishing my phd in wasting time , sleeping and lazying around…trust me it was not that easy as it may sound…requires a strong determination and will power…even if u don’t have anything to do and boredom becomes habitual…just don’t give up…mark my words “U WILL SUCCEED!!!”. Ooh missed one thing that consumed a lot of my precious time…and that being DAY DREAMING…
I just love this thing about me…rosy day dreaming…a trait I had picked up quite early…or being a Piscean , maybe that was inherent…creating a world of your own…getting lost …losing sync with the reality…until here its quite a lovely thing to do…but when u start believing the dreams to be real without making any efforts for the same…the line between the real and the virtual gets blurred…and then one fine day something happens which awakens u from the deep slumber…the reality comes crashing down…then it might become a herculean task to bring life back on track...so its always a better option to not to get carried away…would like to conclude with a famous quote:
“Don’t dream in the dusty recesses of your mind , to wake up and find that it was vanity; but dream with open eyes and act to make it possible!!!”