Aski "De Casta"'s New Diary Jottings

posted by Kutchu @ 12:06 AM 0 comments

Have I changed ? My physical transformation potrayed through a few snaps

Innocene exemplified. Me in schooldays with my school uniform, no spects, sincere and hard working isnt it ? Pictures can be deceptive right you agree with me now right.

My recent passport photo, with my unlucky red tie, after a bashing with Lehman Brothers u can gauge that with the disappointment on my face. Lost opportunity.

posted by Kutchu @ 2:47 AM 0 comments

Can India become a Global Service Hub ?

I believe that India has all the potential and intecllect to reach this benchmark and/or even better global standards in the service sector. But very often we have seen bubbles being burst before they realize their real potential so in order to achieve it we need the following:

Focussed and dedicated effort
Leadership to achieve the desired and targeted global standards
Smart and Savvy attitude towards business
Supportive and conducive external environment (i am using supportive as sometimes people ask for subsidies and favours which kills business attitude, as we then tend to rely on favours to dole out rather than astute strategy to achieve the results)

Indians have been driving the world especially in IT and ITeS sectors crazy they have made great in roads in financial services and management consulting space. But then although we have achieved a lot but then we still have a lot of distance to cover before we achieve global leadership and excellence. We may have the potential which has been proven by now but the question is do we have the drive to keep up the potential and to deliver results. Do we have the delivery capability to drive results, we have a few success stories but have we capitalized on the success stories to covert them into "run of the mill" business models. I mean we need to have Infys in places like Nagpur and Indore to be able to make India truly world class.

We need to be competitive in global business context. Interestingly now the world is responding to our outsourcing wave they are creating their own bases in India, I agree it would help Indian economy if MNC come and set up shops here but then the credit of the success would go to the respective MNCs and hence their parent countries for which India has been working. So we need entreprenuership to lead the world.

Another question which comes to my mind, which may change the flow of discussion although there has been lot said about service sector. I also agree that in developed economies services contribute the major chunk towards GDP but then can services survive without other sectors ? I am afraid the answer to this question is NO, we need to have balanced growth although services can lead the way but it cannot be the sole driver we need agriculture and manufacturing to keep pace with services as well to grow and become a economic powerhouse and not just be content with being called as a "Service Hub".

To give you an extreme and crude analogy for the same, if you have observed any locality having wealthy ppl residing there is invaribaly a nearby locality which has the bais, the watchmen and other sundy staff residing closeby, Sheila Dikshit, Hon'ble CM of Delhi calls this area as "Service Area" and similarly India would be termed as a "Service Hub". But then if you develop it in a sustained and proper manner it would then attain the next level which is "Economic Super-power" so rather than transforming us to a Service Hub we need to see (and realize) a bigger truth of being a "Economic Hub" or "Economic Super-power", and being a service hub would help.

But then steadily india is definetely showing signs of sustained growth, we have the potential to "there" we need to realize a bigger dream of being a "Economic Hub" and not being content with "Services" only. We have to be ambitious entrepreneurs and need astute leaders for achieving this dream (or atleast "my dream of India").

Part 2 of 2

IT can lead others also have to contribute (note my use of word contribute and not support), everyone has to play its part it cannot be a one man show it has to be a team effort to make is sustainable and successful.

There are talks of medical tourism being one such opportunity (reference this weeks Busineesworld) where India can provide medical facilities which may be expensive in developed countries which is what Apollos are trying by getting the JCI certification which gives them a global benchmark. But this idea is still in development phase we still have to wait and watch the success of it.

Coming to farmers going abroad may be a far fetched dream atleast my my imagination and vision (which is surely constrained by my limited eyesight). It might be a better idea for them to do the same things here rather than in developed, developing or under-developed nations. This points to another interesting phenomena can we have outsourcing in agriculture although it is not neccessarily a service industry. But it can human export rather than service import, which may be a low-value game to play, it would be a better idea to aim at a high value game of doing the same here.

Law has immense potential specially in the context of convoluted international law is an opportunity indians can surely expoilt we can have a battery of lawyers sitting in india advising clients abroad with some localized client-facing manpower abroad this would again be labour arbitrage.

I think the question of labour arbitrage is at heart of this discussion do we have only labour arbitrage to play or in other words can we achieve our global dream thru only one point game of labour arbitrage or some call it human capital. But then we need to graduate beyond this concept as MNC are replying back by setting up there own shops here. We have to play quality arbitrage, which seems to be logical next step or may be customised high end services. Growth in value chain also is another aspect which some of the players have already entered like Infy Consulting and other indian player are foraying into. We need to have multi-pronged stragtegy to succeed I agree we need low end game to drive volumes and high end work to build brand and quality. We need IT and ITeS sectors to show leadership but we cannot be world leaders with achieving leadership in other sectors as well. To give you an analogy if an indian IT company say Infy wants to raise capital abroad it will approach Goldman, Morgan or Merill ... why cannot we have ICICI or also SBI Caps (i m being loyal to my employer) do the same. We would realize our dream when we see such things happening. I think to this extent Reliance Industries has been fairly successful in integrating the value chain thru its offering across several sectors which is what Indian economy needs to understand and emulate rather than acheiving imbalanced and unsustainable development in a particular sector

Aski "De Economist" "De Casta"

posted by Kutchu @ 7:16 AM 2 comments

My New Diary

posted by Kutchu @ 6:59 AM 0 comments