In Mumbai for the weekend

Mumbai has it’s own special place in Indian culture. Every Indian city has a culture but Mumbai really is different. And everytime I come here, I am reminded of it:  Life is meant to be lived to the fullest, in a fair and enjoyable way. I wonder what “attribute” would a Marketer want to own in tourists’ mind to attract them : alive, vibrant at all levels, optimism, cosmopolitan are some of the first ones that come to mind. I am sure Mumbai-kars would have tons more, but would love to hear a couple of the ones you feel strongest about.

Also met my kiddo cousin over dinner after work, who is now at SP Jain, one of India’s good B-schools. Kid cousins always grow up faster than you expect, and faster than you want them to . One day you are guiding them and the next day, they are so smart it makes you proud and surprised at the same time. Time never stops for anyone, eh !

She took me to this great restaurant in Andheri West called Sigara. Some of the best Indian food I have ever had; not kidding. It doubles as a flavored-hookah joint. Their special Seekh Kebabs were finger-licking good. In fact, we had an Ice Tea, Seekh, Biryani, Raita, and Mudcake and it was all yummy. It has to be good to make me want to write on the blog after some 7 months!!!! and more !

From now till the next post, hopefully very soon … auf weidersehn.

 

Art investment conference

London Business School today hosted its first Art Investment Conference ; Walid, a dear class-mate and a great guy has been raising the awareness as his personal mission over the last year and the crowd attending today was testament of his hard work.

Due to an important class presentation,  I could not attend it but we really are talking about a big crowd for an inaugural event.

Makes me think, how many of the attendees really love the art and how many want to use it for the snob value?

I have started understanding and appreciating art a little bit since shifting to London but a few days ago was my first encounter with Indian art. Professor Nirmalya Kumar gave a short talk on Jamini Roy paintings at the pre-conference dinner of India Business Forum.  Jamini Roy is considered the father of Indian modern art, and some of his mother-son  pieces in bright shades (Nirmalya owns a few that he had brought over) were riveting.

Makes me wonder, how come so few Indians, even of the”educated” ones, know anything about Indian art?

 

India Business Forum: what a day

India Business Forum 2007 was a class event.  The theme was Indian Infrastructure and speakers like Shanta Devrajan (Chief Economist, World Bank, South Asia), Mr Rajiv Lall (CEO, IDFC),  Praful Patel (Union Minister, Civil Aviation, Government of India) gave impressive keynote speeches while 3 panels discussed numerous issues. The panelists credentials were as impressive as the keynote speakers: The IOC Chairman, The Reliance Energy CTS CEO, Chairman of the SKIl Infrastructure, CEO of the Economist, Director of Morgan Stanley, Head of the JSW Jindal Group and so many many more

I was helping out in handling the media side of things, and we already have had many press mentions in The Economic Times, Deccan Herald along with the storeis being picked up by Rediff and Zee News. (thanks so much Mr. H.S. Rao at PTI and Ms. Sujata at Reuters) The TV coverage should follow in the next few days as CNBC TV18, CNN-IBN, NDTV and BBC were all covering the event and taking interviews.

A few interesting nuggets from the day:

• Shanta Devrajan  started the day in great fashion, by stressing an oft-forgotten theme: India’s infrastructure deficit can be significantly reduced through reforms that will help existing assets. In other words, don’t just keep thinking and talking of new infrastructure all the time; tremendous value can come out of current infrastructure. The case study of Andhra Pradesh spending more on power subsidies than on the entire state health budget every year for the last 5 years was a true eye-opener!!! Make your power infrastructure more robust and value generating by eliminating subsidies, the farmers dont want them; they would rather pay for power that reaches them than free power which is unreliable, stolen by middlemen etc. I was mesmerized by this point of incredibly useless subsidies that continue because it will be non-popular politics.
• Rajiv Lall spoke really well I heard but unfortunately could not attend his speech. He did talk a bit on the under utilized branch network of Public sector banks, that should help debt penetration in future
• The financing panel had very interesting views on how the Public sector banks are still not asset heavy as required, and there is huge shortage of quality PPP project sponsors like GMR etc. The technical details of how longer-term debt will help infra projects a lot but not given by Indian banks because of their asset-liability mismatch
• Praful Patel mentioned that the multiplicity of agencies needs to be simplified to make Tier II and III airports a success. He also said that our carbon footprint is not comparable to the developed world but we are still employing the best environmental practices for all new projects.
• The High commissioner of India to UK ended the day with witty comments about our choice of venue (royal college of obstetricians and gynecologists). He made many interesting remarks, the best being on grievance management; that India must manage the growing tensions that will come up with high-speed development, between regions, classes, industries.

 

Where do you quench your thirst for Indian Business News

I try to keep up with Indian business news regularly. When I am at home in India, The Economic Times print edition rocks. No comparison (except perhaps editorials/opinions/analysis of Hindu). But online – ET could not be worse – I mean they are a shame to a media website. Thank God The Times of India from the same group has now become a muchhhhhhhhh better site (and hope ET will follow soon). But till then? Business Standard, Business Today (too much subscription only), where should I go?? Where do you visit?

 

English-novel reading population in India

How many people in India can comfortably read English-novels?

in other words, whats the market size

I think it should be between 50 and 100 million people (rural vs urban India, basic English vs. good English, literate vs. university educated are some indicators), but doing some geographical segmentation and estimating based on that might yield different results. Another method could be magazine circulation adapted to passing around that happens in India

Just to be clear, this is not about how many would be interested in reading or enjoy reading novels, rather about how many can technically read it

Comments, anyone?

 

Insightful quote, but a day day surrounding it

My flat mate and cricket skipper, Vijay, to me when I ask him if he objects to my putting on a light blue sweater on the field as it was cold “Between life and cricket, chose life. Between MBA and cricket, chose cricket” !!!

And then he gets all angry on me when he thought my decision to give him out was all wrong. Anyway, dropped catch and bad fielding at  deep square leg boundary, only couple of runs as opener and then 2 bad decisions – a bad day at work you have to say

Thank God India won the Bangladesh match (gosh, what will it come to next!!)

 

Laloo Prasad Yadav, and the Indian Railways

This one should get the discussions going.

Had a very heated debate with 2 good friends on whether Laloo should be given any credit at all for the Railways turnaround. I am of the sincere opinion that while he has not done it, he has to have been an enabling factor or else it wouldnt have happened; it hasnt in the last 50 years. Their view was that my view is extremely simplistic; it ignores Laloo’s horrific track record and there could have been 50 other reasons why it happened during his time.

I thought they were stubborn, they thought I was. I am of the opinion to de-align major phases/things people do, they claim that is too dangerous a philosophy to use.

I do have some facts of the matter, but it will be great if someone investigated this real thoroughly. Maybe I will try to find out more in an unbiased manner.