Spare a thought to the flogging stock

Last week was spent in making several trips to the nerve center of government activities in Bangalore - the MS Building, which is conveniently housed adjacent to the famed Vidhan Soudha. Here in the labyrinths of numerous entry gates, floors and corridors you will find the tentacles of what is a humongous State govt machinery.

Almost 17 years back i was here, surrendering my Govt job offer as a Gazetted Probationary officer and at that point i had felt that i had turned my back to this building once and for all. But strange are the ways of the world and i found myself frequent here albeit in a different role.

I was making presentations on several topics to the Karnataka Evaluation Authority which is the nodal agency apprising many govt schemes, programs and implementations. In a way it acts like a mirror to the Govt on its activities and helps it being effective.

In the process of making presentations to a panel of senior officers drawn from various dept on our approach plan & methodology in carrying out third party consultation services I had dug deep into subject matters ranging from Village development Scheme (Suvarna Grama Yojane), Land development & cultivation Program (Suvarna Bhoomi Yojane), Apiculture development scheme, Oil Palm Development, Culture & Heritage preservation.

While each of these is a vast subject that would need several reams even for a summary description and coverage, my point of this blog article is to emphasize the following
 

• Govt schemes in their right earnestness seek to touch the lives of people who are the farthest from the mainstream. Implemented properly this can bring qualitative change to the remotest corner of the country where poor & marginal farmers still live substandard lives
   
• For all the criticisms the Govt attracts, the sheer arch of its involvement spanning public policy making, implementation & administration is staggering. The issues on hand are complex and there are no simple answers (contrary to many of the media news channels like us to believe )
   
• Many a times the Govt has to choose between the devil & the deep sea. Either way its damned for e.g., Scaling up Palm oil cultivation and production is urgently need of the hour to bridge the yawning gap between edible oil consumption and availability in this country. Palm Oil cultivation generates 4 times the yield as conventional crops and is suited for Indian agro climatic conditions. However it is ecologically destructive as countries like Indonesia have found the hard way. The international price situation is also volatile and Govt intervention in procurement through price fixing mechanisms has backfired in the past. But Govt cannot sit back & watch as the supply gap is only widening.

So let’s spare a thought to what is commonly a flogging stock.

Be’Sahara

Big Corporate names swindling ordinary investors is not everyday News. Getting penalized by the regulators and pilloried by the courts is even rarer news.

Seeing Sahara getting a rap on its knuckles gives a flickering hope that the wheels of justice in this country are finally moving.

Scores of ordinary investors, lured by the high rate of Interests and the deceptive sense of security in investing in big Corporate names would have been left in the lurch had the Supreme Court followed by SEBI not intervened.

The newspaper advt put by Sahara in its defense was nothing but bizarre. With a picture of ‘Bharat Mata’ it claimed that it had nothing to pay & rather eligible for a refund from SEBI !

I wonder when will the Kirloskar’s meet this fate? In the early 1990’s, KIFL (Kirloskar Investment & Finance Limited) sprung up and mopped up large amounts of money from Retail Investors .

Assuring of a 14% rate of Interest and additional 1-2% incentive offered by the Agent, several thousand retail investors of the conservative variety got lured into its Fixed deposits.

Reports came in later that the company had invested the proceeds into dubious real estate investments and financial transactions and was unable to meet the redemption's. Many senior citizen Investors like my late father are yet to recoup their investments.

Kirloskar Investment & Finance Ltd followed a similar trail as Sahara and was charged by regulatory bodies like RBI, SEBI, BSE, & CLB on various counts 

• Non compliance with RBI Laws
• Non compliance with SEBI listing guidelines
• Collecting money from public in money circulation schemes by making tall promises of high returns

Despite the winding up process in this case, no action has been taken against the Kirloskar family, its group companies or any of its promoters. In this context, singling of Sahara by freezing its accounts including group firms and attachment of properties seems particularly harsh.

Meanwhile the Kirloskar's who disowned this completely  celebrated 100 years of existence in 2010 as a proud Kirloskarwadi .Can somebody hand me a rotten egg or slipper or something?

Garrett

Jugaad is a unique term synonymous with low cost innovation emerging out of rural India but small town India is not far behind. Take the case of Belgaum, my home town for instance, not too long ago a sleepy town known for its foundry cluster & a clutch of good educational institutes. Now the city can boast of churning out Garrett, India’s first  fully integrated RFID based Jewelry tracking solution. However unlike Jugaad this innovation is no mishmash of an existing technology or platform nor does it come cheap (Price range 4 Lacs - 9 Lacs).

Praveen Chikkodi, a local technopreneur  is to be credited with this solution who while visiting one of the security related exhibition, in a momentary spur of the moment was inspired about the idea. He recognized there’s a market opportunity just sitting there, waiting for someone to develop a convenient, affordable solution.  He knew India Jewelers Inc had to make the next big leap from Bar code to RFID but also aware that easier said than done.

Apart from the technical challenges in designing & developing such a solution from scratch there was a primary hurdle to be addressed. And that is tackling the Indian mindset, especially the Jewelers  who  despite various advancements in technology still cling on to age old practices. Even in today’s world, they work under the mentality of a zero-sum game, in which it is bleakly assumed that the existing way is the best way, and if there was a better way it would already have been tried.

However no deterrence is big enough if the credo is  to start thinking about innovation in terms of being able to do things that were hitherto not only not possible, but not even conceivable. Tata’s Nano or Swachh water purifiers or for that matter Godrej & Boyce’s  ChotuKool refrigerator would not have seen the light of the day had they had not challenged such status-quo.

We began with a simple surmise ; that it is not humanly possible to keep track of hundreds & thousand of  expensive Jewelry items through human intervention. And the  starting point was a Business case study  that would explain them the plot while  pinpointing  underlying assumptions. Getting a clear insight into their modus operandi was never an easy task however, for obvious reasons. Thankfully progressive Jewelers like Lengade brothers in Belgaum came to our rescue with various inputs. Suhas Lengade was particularly an interesting character I came across (he reminds me of Goa’s CM Manohar Parrikkar in appearance), a Doctor by qualification he got intensely curious & supportive of the project.

The Product launch  would be a curtain raiser event & from a list of cities that we shortlisted we narrowed it down to Kolhapur. For 2 reasons, one that it is the abode of Shree Mahalakshmi the Goddess of wealth  and two, it is a wholesale trading center for Silver items and is a seriously rich city now  that boasts of a luxury cars population that is unparalleled in India.

Around 25 top Jewelers from Kolhapur city gathered  at a Business Hotel on 19 May when the product was formally launched. The chief guest Mr.Suresh Gaikwad (inset in pic) President of Kolhapur SARAF association & Mr.Manick Jain, Vice President Kolhapur SARAF association addressed the gathering after the event & expressed their appreciation of the new product and its utility value to the Jewelers. The event was covered by local Tarun Bharat (Kolhapur), Pudhari & Lokmat newspapers.

The product will soon be available across India & best in class Jewelers will undoubtedly be using the product. The 'made in Belgaum' may be missed in the fine print but will surely be a proud reminder for us & the city.

Second Rx your doctor’s opinion

Richard Branson is known as a pugnacious ‘ Live life King Size’ type of character, he also writes like one. A recent article by Richard Branson in Mint was interesting as well enlightening, though he wrote on a management topic, he used his personal experience to relate to a theme in the article.

Here branson narrates how he came out of a ligament tear condition while ‘playfully swinging a young girl around’ (now one can make his own deduction of this statement given Branson’s colourful life). However following the right exercise regimen (given to him by the physiotherapist of the English soccer team) he claims to being fit as ‘fiddle’ in 3 weeks flat. In the process he says he discounted two opinions given by two different ‘surgeons’ (definitely of repute & costly by Branson’s standard) suggesting a elaborate treatment including a painful operation.

This brings me to the point of this article. How many times have you been to a doctor and came back with a feeling of being fleeced? How many had an occasion to feel unduly alarmed by the prescription and the course of treatment recommended for an ailment? Branson may be obliquely referring to the fact that Allopathic Medical profession world over is suffering from a kind of blinkered approach to treating ailments. But is there a case of larger commercial interest hidden behind the elaborate rituals of diagnosis & treatment?

Take my case, I went to consult a gastro specialist at the Manipal Hospital to find a cure for a stomach pain that had been nagging me for a while, earlier this year. I narrated the symptoms ; slight burning sensation accompanied by occasional spasms on the upper portion of my stomach to a specialist there. The guy made a cursory check & asked me to come the next day for a Gastric endoscopy and wrote an elaborate ritual consisting of various pathological tests that preceded this exercise. He said that the endoscopy was necessary as he suspected of ‘Ulcers’ and that samples of the stomach lining would be needed for analysis.

Alarmed I decided to take a second opinion & went to ayurvedic doctor suggested by my friend Athavale. This doctor (Dr.Purander) dismissed all the alarmist prescription I was given earlier and said it was nothing more than a normal stomach upset. He gave me a kind of powder that cured my problem in 3 days flat! And that too at a fraction of a cost that I would have spent at the so called leading Hospital in Bangalore.

What was the difference? simply the absence of medical paraphernalia coupled with correct diagnosis and simple effective treatment. This goes to universally prove what the Rand Health Insurance project found in the US- that going to specialist doctors or fancy hospitals makes no more or less difference in health than non- fee- for- service Health maintenance Organizations (HMO). The only difference however was in the costs (& in a large measure).

Down under: True to character?

I had a chance to link up with a good old friend & excolleague recently. A chartered accountant by profession, this quiet diminutive guy is currently based out at Sydney in Australia. Regular mail exchanges followed our LinkedIn connection and in one of the mails I put a general note of caution asking him to watch out his back & keep safe, out of harms bound. I guess the recent nasty developments in down under was uppermost in his mind too. Yet , he choose to tone down his reaction and wrote back me to saying “Thanks Vasant ...Generally Sydney is quiter than Melbourne. But life is pretty cool here with 99% of the people are good..”

Now he may be a better judge at assessing the situation out there but I was surprised at this calm demeanor in which responded. I am not sure whether the sensationalizing electronic media out here especially the TV NEWS channels have overhyped this situation and carried these incidents overboard, but whatever has happened, in whatever measure , has been utterly distasteful and downright ugly and nasty.

Looking back at his reaction, do i assume that only certain cities in Australia are violence/crime prone than others? Is Sydney safer than Melbourne going by the profile of its residents? Does it mean that these hoodlums are not restricted to few back corner alleys in dark downtown Australia but certain specific geographic locations defined by select cities? Seems hard to digest but Ian Botham, the former English cricketer had an interesting take on this; he always considered all Aussies to be a bunch of convicts who had been banished downunder from England (Ian also had an interesting take on Pakistan, he once described it as "the kind of place to send your mother-in-law for a month, all expenses paid" in an off-the-cuff remark in a radio interview in 1984)

Could it be that this ‘Kalapani’ type island is turning true to its character now, especially with Indians? Between 1788 to 1868, about 165,000 convicts were sent to Australia which means 22 per cent of Australians are descended from exiles. Their sentences served, many convicts remained Down Under, becoming Australia’s first western settlers. Now their descendants are showing why they are often called the offspring of ‘burglars’, ‘heifer stealers’,’ felons’, etc. Ask those numerous badgered Indians and they shall swear by it.

Wow TED

This week & one before has been tough for me, I have been going through excruciating pains of body induced infirmity. And I have been trying to take my mind away from it by watching endless sessions of brilliant presentation of ideas on TED. Now what’s TED? Many people may have not heard about and many more may not have fully comprehended this 3 letter phenomenon called TED. I’ll give an interesting analogy; Everyone must be aware of the smash hit movie of the early 80s called Superman. In the movie there is this glowing green crystal that magically builds the Fortress of Solitude resembling the architecture of Krypton on earth. Activating a control panel inside the fortress, a vision of Jor-El (Superman’s father) explains Clark (Superman, originally Kal-El) on origins, educating him in his powers and responsibilities and finally empowers him to save the world. Now imagine if there ever was such a green crystal in reality what would it do? Ofcourse it would build a fortress of wonder & rediscovery by enabling visions of some of the most talented & intelligent people on earth doing things that usually occupy the outer reaches of fiction. They may not be Kryptonites but their ideas certainly border on Möbius Strip, much like its mathematical origins, blurs boundaries and they are out there to suspend people’s beliefs & imagination and to educate them just like in the movie. TED is equivalent of that green crystal because that’s exactly what it’s set out to do.

TED in short for technology, entertainment and design is a small non-profit devoted to ideas worth spreading and was the brainchild of Richard Wurman but now run by Chris Anderson. It may have started with three disciplines 25 years ago but has become the meeting place of the greatest minds from across disciplines today . The Quality of the speakers & their crisp 18 minute and thereabout talk addresses just about everything. Sample this
• Do you know just in time or as it happens mapping of brain is possible? Christopher deCharms demonstrates a new way to use fMRI to show brain activity -- thoughts, emotions, pain -- while it is happening
• Want to know why the Osama Bin Laden’s or the Pramod Mutalik (of Pink Chaddi fame) of the world do & act the way they do? Blame it on dangerous Memes that Dan Dennett explains
• Are you aware of the 4 sets of Ideas that are impacting India & its implication on the world at large ? Delve into Nandan Nilekani’s mind for answers
• Do you know that the search for cosmic company till now has been equivalent to scooping one glass of water from an ocean and we are already expecting fish in it? SETI's Jill Tarter explains..

You could watch this & many more at www.ted.com and be a part of the growing list of 100 million plus lucky viewers to date.

Fiat’n Caveat

The Fiat grande Punto is visible across Hoardings in Indian cities marking its entry on Indian roads. For someone like me the name Fiat brings in nostalgia, for a generation that grew on a steady diet of Fiats & Ambassadors and nothing much else, it evokes reaction. As a kid I used to always wonder about these ugly country cousins that we were used to owning while one got to see exotic cars only in the dark confines of Cinema Halls shows English films. First look at the Punto reinforces that nostalgic emotion, but with a twist. Here’s a fourth or probably fifth generation car that has all the trappings of premium hatchback but just take a close look at its Front Grill ; it sits on its front visage as some old appendage reminiscent of the car expressions of 1950’s or probably 60’s. Everything else has changed, the aerodynamic body contouring with its smooth edges, bright headlights that wrap around nicely and the rest of the paraphernalia. But the Front Grill, its upper half being prominent, just sits there in the front with a grimace or shall I say dreary look. It almost reminds me one of the smug emoticon on Instant messenger.

Now what baffles me is that the car has been designed by the famous ‘Fiat style centre’ & is a product of its chief designer Giorgetto Giugiaro . Traditionally every Car maker leaves his genetic imprint on his/her finished product. It could be a certain style of designing the body shell especially in the front or back, engine (including its placement), or chassis design (especially that concerning its clearance from the ground) etc. This list also includes front grill that more often than not bears the hallmark of its maker. Car designers , like others of their ilk in the design fraternity have a vocabulary that describes or explain their design. I wonder what Fiat’s designers had to say while designing the grille? Hope they are aware that when another Car maker planned to launch a model in India, they had to give considerable facelift to their front grill after extensive pre-launch consumer surveys & feedback showed that Indian’s dint like a Car with a frowning look. I am not sure whether Fiat’s choices of Grill design was driven by some ambitious plan to breakout from the current clutter and bring out its strong cult like image & following that it had in India of the past. That the car packs a strong emotional punch & ownership desire is in little doubt but this bit of grill trivia makes it doubly interesting.

CDC - A nursery for budding flowers

Playschool has become a much bandied word today, thanks to the gross commercialization in this sector today. So I would prefer to use the word Nursery that we were looking for our 4 year old Toddler about a year back. And nestled in a quiet residential neighborhood of Indiranagar , this nursery (Child Development Centre aka CDC) was an ideal choice for us due to its proximity and good location. The Fees were quite reasonable too compared to other ‘branded playschools' in the area that we found to be in a ‘matter of fact’ speaking ;more hype than substance. Here we met the principal, Mrs.Roye who in a quite frank demeanor set forth about her playschool agenda and emphasized that along with fun & learning her curriculum involved a host of activities that made it more meaningful for the children. We were also gladdened by the fact that this 12 year old nursery belonged to a sister school called Sherman Oaks California with a branch school in New York. The teachers out here had to undergo a mandatory teacher training workshop – early childhood education diploma conducted by the Catholic society of Koramangala, essential for imparting quality preschooling education.

We found the nursery to be quite active throughout the year & engaged the parents quite regularly. It began with a ‘Orientation to parents’ interactive session with Ms.Roye followed by a number of parenting sessions that covered myriad topics like Nutrition (eating problems), clinical psychology, dental issues, meditation, preparation for formal schooling etc. The kids had their fun days on Daughter’s day , Son’s day, Children’s day etc while the grandparents got their day to celebrate with kids in school on 12 December. The teachers played with the children on the Children’s day on 14 Nov (wonder how many formal schools actually do this?) Other activities like outdoor trips, fancy dress parade, Christmas day , Annual sports day meant that the kids had a roaring time throughout the year. Another good practice that the school follows is Parents –Teachers meeting – a one to one meeting to track the child’s progress - done 4 times a year. On the academic side my son picked up writing skills (A-Z) and now has a sizable vocabulary in addition to being fluent in a number of rhymes.In the overall analysis it has been a pretty good beginning for him and he had his first day at a formal school (Baldwins) today.

SlugDog Millionaire

Last week the hammer went down on the player auctioning for the 2nd season of IPL and with another round of Tamasha set to begin soon, I am left wondering at the distance I am maintaining in my mind from this form of ‘fantasy’ cricket. Looking at the auctions brought in a kind of revulsions & disgust, a niggling feeling of unease at how the game has been commercialized, pure Bollywood ishtyle. Cricket Atyachaar I said to myself as I cut through a sneery swathe of following questions in my mind looking for weary answers

Where is the Passion in this form of game? Cricket is religion in this country & its proponents reigning Gods right? And is one magic formula where our million mutinies gets temporarily absolved in oneness with the Blue brigade when they fight the marauding Aussies or motivated Pakis. Can the same be even remotely replicated here in IPL? Agreed, its packaged for entertainment but why in the name of Almighty should I show allegiance to some funny sounding city based team? After team India I can only identify with team Karnataka , yaah with that ‘Soil ke Phool’ feeling (duh).But with Jack Kallis , Kevin Peterson & ilk , and holding Royal Challenger flag? Naah...i’d rather take it as some offbeat advertisement and endorsement for Mr.Mallya & his tipple.

What were the Bollywood film heroines doing there at the auctions? Maybe to keep the glamour quotient off the field, remember that there are firang (Redkin) cheerleaders to take care in the field. But what the heck , are they not doing the same thing what Mandira did to anchoring & commentary during World Cup? Who cares as along as the eye balls are rolling in.

What about economics, is there anything called recession here? I read somewhere that it was the only asset class (for investors in IPL teams) where one could have got 100% returns in the past one year. Maybe that’s what prompted Raj kundra to pump around $16 million in Rajasthan Royals, prompted by all the calculators on valuation & RoI that JP Morgan & KPMG would have churned out. With million dollar babies (read players) around ,will the average cricket fan beat his recession blues to watch the celebrity slambang talent with price tag glitter remains to be seen.

What will happen to the real art & craft of the game? I mean the one suited for the original longer version of the game. T20 seems to be the ‘in-thing’, with its testosterone influenced plot, and IPL has taken it further by placing it on a commercial easel with a heady mix of glamour and money. Actual Cricket is dead & buried, long live Cricket!

ASatyam : Auditors or Spin doctors?

This is what I was left wondering after reading an article published in Business Today, circa March 2008 that I accidentally stumbled upon while clearing my book shelf recently. This was about an interview with Samuel A.DiPiazza Jr , World Wide CEO of Price Water House Coopers (PwC), a full 9 months before Satyam blew up in their face . The CEO in his characteristic style , answered to what could be termed as prophetic questions, on what would unfold later, and I am revisiting that conversation in this blogpiece just to put that perspective in hindsight. Makes very interesting reading & Here’s how it goes (ad verbatim)

Q:Is there still too much that firms like PWC do in terms of services to one client – you’re doing auditing , you are doing tax advisory and you’re also doing consulting for them. Wouldn’t there be some sort of conflict that gets built into this kind of model?
A: I simply don’t accept that. There’ve been considerable number of academic studies that have shown that where we have engaged with a client in a broader set of activities, the likelihood of audit failure is much lower because we have deeper understanding of the company (sic). Another piece of that is when we audit, we don’t just use accounts. Our auditing process requires tax people, it requires actuaries, it requires technology people – all different type of skills.If you were to take one of these audit firms & say ‘you only do audits’, we would have a very difficult time attracting those kinds of talents and the quality of audits go down
Q. Earlier you’d mentioned that businesses would continue to make mistakes. No one has issues with mistakes that happen due to bad strategy. But what happened in Japan with one of your clients in 2006 was cheating and that affected PwC very badly. So, have companies actually learnt and are they keen on being clean?
A. I think the vast, vast majority of companies have always had a commitment to being clean, to do the right thing, before Enron, and after Enron. But I also believe that you operate in a world where if people want to break the rules, if they feel personal pressure or greed, they’ll try to break the rules. And you need processes and activities to keep that from happening. And whenever we feel that one of our people has done something wrong—not just made a mistake, but something morally illegal—we take very harsh action, and our situation in Japan shows that. We, effectively, shut that firm down. It cost us hundreds of millions of dollars of business, but we didn’t blink.
Q. But do you think it’s possible for auditors to prevent fraud?
A. Actually, I think auditors prevent fraud every day because we are the eyes and ears of industry. We come to the table with an independent point of view. We test, question, and we challenge. CEOs encourage us to do this. So, there’s no question in my mind that the entire audit profession has, over the years, prevented fraud. We find often, during the course of a year, people pushing that envelope. And most of the time it’s not visible, it’s not public because it’s fixed before it ever becomes a factor. People are fired, and it’s very quiet and that’s the job we have.
Q. In some sense, you’re not just the eyes and ears of the industry, but also the conscience of the client.
A. Yes, and boards… you asked about change. Today, CEOs and supervisory boards are deeply into what we do. So, it’s not “we and they”, we’re in this with the boards and with the management. Reputational damage done through financial mis-statement is huge and no one wants their name connected to that. No board member, no supervisory board member and no CEO. Sometimes, the pressures they put create that incentive in their company and they have to understand that they can only push so far before people might go too far.

In an interview earlier in 2003 in the same Magazine, DiPiazza while making a case against Auditors being consultants has echoed “Actually, you do not need a consulting project to corrupt you. The audit fee is large enough to corrupt you if you aren't a person of integrity.”

He is the author of the book ‘Building Public trust: The future of corporate reporting’ , which for all you know may be being read & reviewed by Ramalinga Raju in his downtown prison in Hyderabad.

Foggy deal: The Conniving ways of Airlines

Delhi & the north was engulfed in a thick blanket of Fog over the year end, the newspaper & channels screamed of the innumerable flight & train delays that had been a result of this . The Fog would descend like a thick white blanket early in the evening & would refuse to budge well into the middle of the day later. And worse, I had a number of scheduled flight tickets between 30th Dec & 3rd Jan in & out of Delhi especially in the early mornings & late evenings. I had to cancel some of them & reschedule the others. So when I approached the airlines reservation staff at Delhi with this problem they were to give me a different picture. They said all flights had departed on time the previous day & that they were non committal on any possible delays the next day. That meant I would either have to forgo the cancellation charges or wait till the last very moment to check on delay status for full refund. And their rule book said that I would be eligible for a full refund on cancellation only if there was a preponement of 20 minutes or postponement of 50 minutes or more.

One look outside was all it required to figure out the situation but the Airline staff kept on repeating the usuals; weather can change anytime, clearances may be given based on ground situation blah blah... The delays of the previous days or the severity of the current situation did not seem to in any way have a bearing on them . While I cancelled one of my trips & took a similar schedule for a different destination the same day did I realize the true picture. My Flight to Lucknow which was scheduled to depart at 9 a.m actually took of at 1:00 pm. But there was technically no delay on behalf of the airlines, because they gave us the boarding passes at 8:45 am saying that the flight would depart on time and made us wait for a full 4 hours subsequently on the bus at the tarmac & inside the aircraft. A good part of 25 minutes were spent in the near freezing conditions in the former, with elderly & small children having to bear the brunt. A similar thing would have surely happened with my cancelled ticket which was to depart at the same time. Yet they refused to acknowledge any delay & made me forgo the base fare charges even after I had cancelled 1 Hr prior to the flight. For the conniving airlines, and a blind & indifferent Airport authorities , this was not a delay since the flights boarded on time.

Why did the airport authorities give clearance for boarding when they knew that visibility was low & flight would be delayed by hours? The flight attendants said that this could possibly be due to accommodation problems at the airport! Now this shows the state of Apathy in the authorities who seem to have more sympathy for airlines than passengers. For the airlines it is a convenient way to skip the cancellation refund clauses by technically boarding the passengers & make them wait for hours on the runway. Now who says the airlines are Bleeding?

A requiem

The city of million dreams
Stands on the ruins of battered screams
Blood & gore, in all its yore
from a few men across distant shore,
what they achieved in the end, they themselves not know
Helplessness stems after the anger & rage
Mumbai will again find its ways, its indomitable spirit will sway,
Until the next time again when Hell prays & showers its pain
Our leaders watch when things unfold again
with pointed fingers in political blame game,
Before they slip into their comfortable den,
The City will scream again.

The ICICI Conundrum

ICICI Bank has been active in public memory of late, be it the SMS’es,the advertisements or plain News stories. And all of it seems to be for the wrong reasons! The stock market crisis has been bad and particularly worse for the bank shareholders like me. The stock among select few got particularly hammered but of all the 5000 or so listed Cos, but ICICI has been a singular standout crying hoarse about a certain cartel of brokers and certain vested interests working overtime to pull the stock down.

This is not the first time the Bank has had this kind of problem, a few years ago it reported a ‘run on’ deposits in certain western parts of India due to similar malicious rumors. Is there anything about trading communities & business group activities that can be so detrimental to a particular Company. What could be the motivating factors?

ICICI has been a spectacular story in the Banking & Financial services space marked by a kind of aggression that you normally associate with few family run Indian Cos. Its transformation from a Corporate lending entity to a retail powerhouse has been swift and efficient driven largely by the vision and foresight of its enigmatic leader K.V.Kamath (KVK).

Actually it was a great place to work and learn too as I found out in my 5+ year stint between 1999-2005. What particularly stuck out in my memory was the incredible quality and tenacity of the top management whom I witnessed from close quarters. You got personalized response letters from the MD & ED on sending marriage invitation, you could regularly drive around the town with the Business Head (V. Vaidyanathan aka Vaidy,now country head) sitting beside you and discussing mundane business or directly correspond with them on crucial official matters .

I first interacted with KVK during a branch opening in Manipal sometime in 1999 where he spoke about brand building very passionately. And he was very consistent at that because he would pull down faulty glow-signs while traveling & chide senior officials in meetings when they made power point presentation with the wrong fonts.

Vaidy on the other hand was incredibly unassuming and approachable. One of his ex-colleague from a XIMB , a friend of mine had to tell me that he was not particularly an academic standout but had a certain X factor. In my interactions I could figure out that he had loads of work stamina just like his 40km marathons but more importantly had a good way of dealing with people. No wonder he zoomed through the progression curve & made it to the top without an IIM tag.

Another luminary was Chanda Kochhar who ushered certain kind of sensitivity to client engagements. When I was handling Infosys account, she particularly kept a tab on developments and made regular personal visits with me in tow to client.

However the scorching growth had its pitfalls . Overzealous collection agents messing up with customers or clients complaining of overselling (loans & cards earlier and as in the derivatives imbroglio later) were early indications. So were the ubiquitous ‘tele marketing calls’ that became synonymous with ICICI where every square customer in the retail market was systematically bombarded with carpet calls.

The branches too started getting progressively crowded and the services tended to be impersonal. Credit card complaints among other loan products started blipping on RBI radar frequently. Even the important securitization law had the ICICI stamp when it took Mardia chemicals to court and won.

In the meantime the crown prince-in-waiting Nachiket Mor gave it all up for non profit socially inclusion initiative role in IFMR. The Bank amidst all this has been undertaking a media blitz to project a more responsible and sensitive image and allaying unfounded fears through a sustained media campaign.

So a lot is happening on the ICICI saga and this may not be last you will hear on that front.