Author: admin

IT firms

admin

IT firms and the Indian market –  I come from a non IT and internet background and have been very surprised how arrogant most IT and internet companies in India are. In engineering, even if you worked for the largest company in the industry and your customer was a very small company, you always tried to be flexible, listen to the customers requirement and make changes wherever possible.  I remember going to every hardware store in Ajmer searching for  a particular type of cable for wiring, after a customer had made a last minute change in location and the cable reel the vendor had bought from Mumbai was not enough. After all, the customer ultimately paid your salaries.

Looks like I am not alone, many other Indian companies face a similar problem. That is why  I don’t feel work experience in the biggest IT firms or internet companies helps, the Indian market is very different.

Colonised minds

admin

The colonised minds of  the Indian Elite and media

quoting from this article

British colonisers in league with the Christian missionaries realised 200 years ago that the biggest obstacle to fully subjugating India was Hinduism.Simultaneously, they created in a span of two or three generations a class of Indians who looked up only to the West.

As a result, these Anglicised Indians became ashamed of their own culture. This Western/anti-Hindu outlook was handed down from generation to generation, right down to our age, where many of India’s brilliant and articulate Hindu-Marxist intellectuals, products all of institutions like jnu, or St Stephen’s, keep on repeating, as if by rote, what their hoary forebears were taught by the British

I interact with people from different countries online, and in no country do people take so little pride in their country or grovel for the approval of others . In the last few years call centres and outsourced jobs have only aggravated the problem. That is why most Indian tech companies only provide services,  they don’t have too many products, it is basically an attitude problem.

Jobs and salaries

admin

In the current economic conditions, companies are trying to reduce their variable expenses, and one of the first casualties are the jobs.  I personally feel that salaries in the last few years have increased too rapidly and many people are overpaid for doing too little work.

The basic cost of living in India is still low, so most of the extra money people were earning was wasted on luxuries.  Hopefully , the media will stop hyping that kind of lifestyle and people will learn some humility.

A job in a reputed company may have lot of status in society, but in a job however well it  may pay, you have very little control over your future.  One wrong decision by the management and you may end up jobless.

Indian corporates

admin

As the media covers the Satyam fraud , they should spend some time introspecting.  Most of the corporates in India, especially family managed businesses reflect the values of  the society in which we live, and  how honest are people today?  In the last five years,  people have become very materialistic,  how much money they think you have defines how people treat you, not the kind of person you are. India never had a culture of dissent or independent thinking, so few people have their own opinion, they only ape other countries.

While starting my own business has been rewarding both financially and work wise,  one of the things  I find missing is the trust I took for granted while working in India’s largest professionally managed non-foreign MNC company.  There were very good systems in place to ensure that no one tried to circumvent the system, but I think it is more related to the kind of  people  they recruited.  Most of them were not conventionally smart as defined by the media today, but they were sincere, disciplined and got work done.  Rules were the same for everyone, if  a person was on probation and came to office more than 5 minutes later than the official timings too often, the job was not confirmed and he was asked to leave.

Doing business online, especially with some Indian companies has been nothing short of a nightmare for me.  I have some domains that may be considered “valuable”  and  the underhand tactics used to get me to sell the domain names have been a revelation.  What I can’t understand is that if you want anything  from me, why not introduce yourself  and tell me what you want. I do not care for contacts or references, and  I find nothing wrong in directly approaching people  for business related issues,  after all  you have to make a start some time.

If  I find something fishy,  I will try to avoid any interaction or keep it to the minimum possible. For a period of a few years or decades, you can make a lot of money taking short cuts , but in the long run honesty is the best policy.  If  you want to be the best in the world, it is not by adopting foreign accents, names or dressing codes, (or plastering your website with foreign female models)  but by ensuring that the way you conduct  your business is such that no one can point a finger at you.

Lipstick and jeans

admin

Lipstick and jeans – shows the disconnect between the politicians and the English / electronic media which claims to be representative of India. These media channels have so much influence because they have the money, but if you are a lady and travel in Rajasthan and UP alone on work , “Lipstick and jeans” will land you in a lot of trouble. As an engineer, I found that the simpler you are, the easier it is to get work done and people will go out of their way to help you.

In many companies in Mumbai and other metros, makeup and Western clothes may define the competence of a female employee and her progress up the corporate ladder, but this is not true every where. Real power lies with our politicians and businesspeople and there are very few “lipstick and jeans ladies ” in that group.

The chief minister of one of India’s  poorest states has won elections without knowing the local language and comes from an affluent background.  Most people appreciate sincerity, not  the  right accent and looks which are so important in the English media today.  But are the “lipstick and jeans ladies ” willing to sacrifice their luxury branded goods and exotic foreign holidays to make a real difference?

Attitude

admin

One of the reasons India is such a laggard in many fields is the attitude of most people. They have lead a very easy life and cannot take tough decisions quickly. Israel is such a small country, but they are able to defend themselves very well. As people used to tell me ” If you lead a difficult life, you become so tough that you can handle anything”

Tech/IT in India

admin

A post on investing in India . What is interesting is most of the startups have founders with a  software background or  are NRIs. The problem with working in a software company, however big or famous it is, is that you never see the full picture.  You are only handle the software coding part , the decision about the hardware , vendor finalisation, etc are taken by someone else. Most of the clients are not from India, so you do not know much about actual conditions in India.

On the other hand , if  at least a significant number of engineering graduates from top colleges had worked as engineers in India, they would have had a better understanding of the market.  Though the work is not glamorous, you handle entire projects, right from selecting and ordering the correct resistor with color code,  minimising project cost and providing documentation so that the cement plant operator in  Tehsil Gauriganj District Sultanpur (known in the media as Amethi), who you will never meet or communicate with , can understand and handle the equipment you designed without any problem.

They also underestimate the importance of the user / customer,  you may have the best technology in the world,  but if does not meet the market need , it will not succeed.

Marketing

admin

One of the things I have noted about Indian companies, especially Indian internet companies is that they do not market themselves well. They may sell themselves to their peers with a similar tech background , venture capitalists, online tech media and sundry investors, but they spend very little time understanding the end users.

For many, marketing is this.  But at the most, the tech community may consist of a few million users in India, and most of them have very little time after their regular job, to use or spend money on a new tech product. If you are targeting users world wide , your product should be as per world standards in both technology, user interface and documentation.

Some products are also not realistic. Why will I store all my important documents online? If there is a problem with my internet connection or I am traveling to a place where the internet connection is unreliable, I would rather store the information on a hard disk. When you are young, “friends” and their life history may be important, but after a certain age, you are too busy with your work to be bothered.

The best marketing is always subtle, the buyer or user does not realise that you are selling a product or service. It involves fulfilling a need, and the buyer or user is happy to pay for the service. This requires a lot of market research, try to understand the mind of the user.  If your marketing is too “in the face” or blatant, the user or buyer will be put off. The average internet user, especially for tech products , is more intelligent than most people and can easily detect a lie.

If you are working with customers around the world, it is also important to have high standards of transparency. Instead of blinding aping externals like Western clothes and lifestyles, (and denigrating people  who don’t ), they should try to adopt their culture of innovation , independent thinking and meritocracy . Networking and having contacts may help for a short time, but finally your product quality and business practices matter. In the long run, even in India, people like to do business with companies they trust, companies that treat their customers with respect.

Indian internet startups

admin

There is a lot of hype in the online and offline media about internet start ups in India.  I have an internet business  but I do not have a background in programming or the internet, so my way of  looking at things is different.

When I started my business, I did not know any one personally from the internet sector and even now all my contacts are strictly professional, with  companies who pay me for advertising on my websites.

With all the limitations I have ,  I am fairly satisfied with the money I make.  I have been following the internet start ups and companies in India, some of the reasons why internet usage is still low and few will succeed are:

1. Most target a very small market.  If the market size itself is Rs 100 crore, even if you dominate the market, growth is limited.

2.  They are usually copies of  successful websites in other countries, little thought is given to the actual market.

3.  The reasons why people start an online business  seem to be all wrong –  because it is fashionable,  to get venture capital funding , to become famous.

4.  I have been tracking all major stories on start ups in India for the last year , all of them seem to think that having a nice software application and well designed website will make it successful and popular.   They do not realize that for the visitors,  the website should be useful , design is secondary.

5. Most start up teams seem to have very limited exposure – they only seem to be knowing people with a background very similar to theirs ( may be since people in India are very status conscious and rarely try to understand the viewpoint of  others who are not as lucky), this makes it difficult to develop a  product with a broader appeal.

6.  The internet companies seem to think they are online clones of the Indian software companies – to grow they need to hire people. My idea of  an ideal online business is one which I can control and manage anywhere in the world with an internet connection, once setup it should need little additional effort, but earn a regular income.

7. In the Indian startup scene today, from media reports it seems funding = success.  But it appears that startups are exploited .  If you believe in your idea, why go to others for money?  Most  software jobs pay well , if  you lead a frugal life, you can save enough . Unlike factories which require an investment of hundreds of crores,  you can start an internet / IT business with less than lakh rupees.