Thursday, October 30, 2008

The Great Indian Middle Class. A Comprehensive Report By NCAER,India.


It's the great Indian Middle Class who are pushing the Indian Economy. It's her in built domestic demand which is pushing the Indian Economy. 

Only 2% of India's population is investing in the Stock Market.

These middle class are also entering in to the stock market not directly but via Mutual Funds and Unit Linked Insurance.
They are the target audience fr Organised Retails, Small Cars,Housing Loans, Educational Loans and FMCG  firms.

It's the Middle Class buying population which gives a direction to India's Economic growth.It's the Middle Class Indian who are consider to be the backbone of our strong economy.
The Indian economy should give opportunity to its poor section to get in to the Middle class bracket.

Here is an interesting report by National Council Of Applied Economic Research.
Please click:




Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Tata's Gift To Cornell


Ratan Naval Tata , one of Cornell's most eminent alumni, is chairman of Tata Sons, the holding company of the Tata Group. Tata was named one of the 30 most respected CEOs in the world by Barron's magazine last year, and the Tata Group was awarded the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy in 2007.Tata has given $50 million to Cornell University for educational development.
The endowment consists of $25 million to establish the Tata-Cornell Initiative in Agriculture and Nutrition, which will contribute to advances in nutrition and agriculture for India; and $25 million for the Tata Scholarship Fund for Students from India, to help attract more of the best and brightest students to Cornell from India.
Tata’s are known for corporate governance and running business with values and ethics, they are the pioneers in the Iron and Steel ,Automobile in India.Their recent project is on people’s car Nano which will cost around Rs 120000( US $ 2,400) which will be getting launched on 28th December 2008 on RNT’s birthday,

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Azim Premji's Management Advice To All The Wiproite


Mr Ajim Pemji  Chairman of Wipro India ,has recently issued one letter to 95,000 employees working in the Global Indian Conglomerate, Wipro.
Premji has advised seven points which can be used to reap the benefits even in the economic down turn.
His most important advice to all his colleagues "to align people to business opportunity.Re-skill and right-skill to make things happen."
His management mantra remains the same it's "customer centricity". 



Sunday, October 19, 2008


Renee Mauborgne came to India to attend the SAS Premier Business Leadership Series.

She categorically stated that Indian Premier League bought the BCCI unquestionable success in the T-20 cricket, drawing as many as 18 million viewers.

 She said in an interview with Indian Management”Tata Motors’s Nano is probably the Blue Ocean that is getting the most global press and curiosity. I know the car is not out yet and with the rising input cost whether it can hit its price target is some thing we have to watch for.  But I think this is very exciting experiment to create a car for people who could never have cars and at such a challenging price.”

 As in the case of Blue Ocean Strategy demand is created rather than fought over. There are ample opportunity for growth that is both profitable and rapid. Here competition is irrelevant because the rules of the game are waiting to be set. Blue Ocean is an analogy to describe the wider, deeper potential of market space that is not yet explored.

 The Blue Ocean Strategy is basically a four step strategy. At the core centre is the four-step strategy visualization process any organization can approach and apply.

The first step is the Visual Awakening. At this particular stage the business executives are asked to draw their 'As Is' strategy map - a visual representation of their company's strategy vis-à-vis the competition. This brings home the need for change. It serves as a forceful wake-up call for companies to challenge their existing strategies.

The second step is called the Visual Exploration. Here in this step the managers go into the market field to explore the new market space creation. Here managers observe the distinct differences of alternative products and services and takes decisions which factors should be eliminated, created or changed in the offerings to the customers which will give value addition to the customers.

The third step is the Visual Strategy Fair. Here executives begin to draw their 'To Be' Strategy map based on insights from the market exploration observations and test these ideas with customers, non-customers, and lost customers.

The fourth and final step is 'To Be' strategy canvas; the last step is to communicate it in a way that can be easily understood by any employee of the organization.

 

HR Management dilemma in India's Jet Airways.


The sacking of 1900 employees by Jet Airway’s management , and bringing back them on board within forty eight hours after sacking has been most talked about management topic the global corporate HR management strategy.

Jet's management has over reacted to the economic meltdown, a traditional India   have got a very conservative culture, though we are trying adopting the westernized management system, but this is very difficult to practice in India in taking tough decisions particularly with HR related issues.

The typical hire fire  management system is not applicable in Indian corporate culture, if we look back to late Mr. G.D.Birla, Late Mr. J.R.D.Tata they were very conservative in their HR management policy, they believed in a mix of corporate management and as well as family management that was made on the principal of Gandhi's Collective bargaining and mutual trusteeship model.

It may be due to our own ancient Indian Hindu-Buddhist traditional culture, very much like the Japanese management and work culture of life time employment.

Mr. Goel got very emotional and said that it's his family and the family members will sacrifice (Pay cut) and both management and employees will help to bring back the loss making Jet to profit.

Unlike West  we don't have the safety net and stubborn social security; it's basically a rapid transformation from a traditional primary economy to industrial economy to tertiary economy.

Over the last decade in India the tertiary economy (service sectors like BFSI, BPO, KPO, Retails, and Air Taxi Business etc) has grown by leaps and bound, the Indian Gen Y has been absorbed in these sectors.

The transformation and dependence on the tertiary sector has been very rapid and the whole education and training sector in India has focused on these above sectors and are churning out thousands of manpower focusing on this sector. The macro economic management transformation has been too fast.

The real economic tsunami will hit India, if the multi billion US$ outsourcing industry order flow vanishes overnight which is very much possible. One third of revenues of Infosys, TCS, Satyam, Wipro’s  comes from U.S. market over night this business can vanish.

One good thing happens India management can take lessons during the downturns, Indian corporate, policy makers in government, and educational professionals like you, can sit back and introspect what exactly going wrong, with India.

As India is a young country 55% of her population is below 25 years of age, we really have to think back about our education management systems and human capital management and development process.

One more thing lastly the silver lining, which can really bail out India from this turmoil is the domestic demand management.

If the domestic demand can be properly managed the immediate crisis can be neutralized too some extent. 

 

 

 

 

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

China's Role In the Global Economy.


In the last two decades globalisation has taken it's proper shape. Interestingly China's role has made the whole management world to rethink about the success that China has made in the manufacturing sectors. The cost effectiveness has prompted the Western conglomerates to shift manufacturing bases to China, in order to remain competitive in the global market.China's role in the BRIC economic block is significant and working as growth engine in the world economy.

There are many questions which comes to my mind regarding the super economic success and sustainable model of China's success.It's the china's central govt policies and its manpower planning and development has helped the economy to grow faster, but the main question still lies how it has motivated it's labor at such cheap price to remain competitive.

1. How can China turn around so fast into a world class manufacturing hub from a closed and command economy?

2. How can be the cost is so competitive by Global standard?

3. How can China motivates its workforce in SEZ, at such low cost, is it by stick or by carrot.

4. The basic principal of Economics is “Capital formation can only be possible through cheap work force"; it has become the manufacturing base of the western conglomerate because of international labor arbitrage market. How long it will be possible to maintain this phenomenon.?

5. Talk about Cisco which is outsourcing its routers from china , but many Chinese manufactured brands in the router segments like Huwai, Maipu ,are coming up very fast and doing brand positioning in the Global market. Which can be threat to many global MNC brands that are getting the contract manufacturing from them? Replicating a business success is not big issues. IBM checked out from PC business and Lenevo (Previously contract manufacturer for IBM) and has positioned its brand in the global market. Don’t you think Western MNCs will be in deep trouble, contract manufacturing, outsourcing can back fire? South Korea Brands like Samsung, LG, etc are giving tremendous fight to U.S and EEU brands.

6. The China is not only in manufacturing hub of the world, they are learning English and by 2012; many of the BPO and KPO jobs can shift from India to China. Soon it will be the service hub of the world and a stiff competitor for its neighboring India. Will it be really possible to be another cheap service hub of the world, next to India?

7. How meticulously they have reaped the demographic dividend, the quality and disciplined human capital has given them the huge dividend, transforming ordinary human capital to a productive and knowledge based human capital within a very short period of time. How this has been possible?

8. How China is maintaining and developing the SEZ, its land acquiring , developments in the infrastructures like roads, telecoms , housing of SEZ. Making SEZ and providing all the infrastructures for investors or contract manufacturing is also important and the central government must have worked proactively and have helped to make these SEZs, viable and productive.

Sunday, October 12, 2008

Turnaround Management Experts Will Be In Great Demand To Bail Out Sinking Corporates.

Contemporary management requires Turnaround Management expects, who are seasoned captains to steer ships in stormy high sea conditions.

After this great economic melt down , the next phase requires CORPORATES TURNAROUND experts.

Turnaround management professionals will be in great demand. Again the Transformation leadership will play the most important role to generate confidence in the mind of the stake holders.

In such corporate crisis, the leadership elements of the business captain are to be displayed with high degree of business acumen and managing skill sets.

With poor balance sheet and negative net worth, strong and prudent leadership will be the only panacea for these organization. Strategic vision in terms of utilizing very scares factors of productions and properly allocating these inputs will be the real acid test for the turnaround business leader.

These under performing corporations has to be revitalized , rejuvenated and it requires a well thought after balanced turnaround management process.

According to Shamsud D. Chowdhury und occurs when ”a firm perseveres through an existence threatening performance decline; end the threat with combination of strategies, systems ,skills and capabilities; and achieves sustainable performance recovery. The obverse of performance recovery is failure and death.”

The above definition of Corporate Turnaround has the very in depth meaning and self explanatory.

According to Chowdhury there are four stages which requires to be monitored very carefully. And the stages are as follows.

1st Stage: Decline, 2nd Stage: Response Initiations,3rd Stage: Transition and the 4th Stage: Outcome.

At the 1st Stage the firm’s performance reaches its nadir the stock market and the balance sheet reflects it.

Then the 2nd stage ,swiftness of the change management comes in , the sense of urgency and corrective actions has to be initiated.

3rd Stage : the turnaround management mechanism, the transition process and the most complex and difficult stage. This is the stage when the turnaround experts experiments with different strategies, structures, cultures and technology. Sometimes ruthless smart sizing and downsizing happens in this stage .


The 4th stage is the outcome stage, outcome of all the management activities undertaken during the 3rd stage is realized. The outcome can be a success or failure.

Turnaround experts help to get in to break even as quickly as possible reduce the gestation time to profitability from a loss situation.

Governments should come forward with all fiscal measure to bail out these loss making organizations. Internal corporate governance will play an important role.

Turnaround management is a subset of Change management rather at an accelerated space. It's easier said than done , in past IBM, Chrysler,Nissan,GM all these corporations has been bailed out from deeper crisis, so nothing to worry about, again a big challenge for the management professionals.

The Original article is below for your ready reference.

FindArticles - Turnarounds: A stage theory perspective
Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences, Sep 2002, by Shamsud D Chowdhurry