I am sort of convinced that Microfinancing is the way to grow entrepreneurs in India. May be we will need some variations of pure Microfinancing – like how www.prosper.com is doing; people-to-people financing.
We certainly need innovative ways and means of achieving new economics for our rural areas. Liberalization of Manmohan Singh era was certainly great – it gave us tremendous exposure. I personally don’t think I would have been in this position if liberalizations had not taken place!
Microfinancing has a charitable angle. It is targeted towards improving quality of life by lending small amounts of loans with specific parameters. Though the business of Microfinancing is profitable, the value that this creates for entrepreneurs is less.
The variations of this could be micro-investing. Why not people directly invest in venture ideas and get equity? Why not create a micro-private equity place virtually?
Sunday, April 30, 2006
Monday, April 17, 2006
Enterpreneureship - Innovation and Marketing
Peter Drucker once said there are only two jobs for an entrepreneur - Marketing and Innovation. All other are execution and operational.
I think it is perfect! I didn't see any other contributions that entrepreneurs ever made! Larry Ellison is happy developing products, marketing and letting the execution parts to someone else. Bill Gates is happy being Chief Software Architect and no one knows marketing better than him. Narayana Murthy is as happy as ever being a chief mentor. Google founders are happy that their company is being run by Eric Schmidt. Hardly anyone actually even knows the name of Google founders.Biggest quality of entrepreneurs may be that they are happy in innovating and marketing; letting other people run operations.
Well, I don't have much of empirical data on this, but wherever I see, there is a strong evidence for what Mr. Drucker says. After all, it is Peter Drucker and no one has any questions about that.
I think it is perfect! I didn't see any other contributions that entrepreneurs ever made! Larry Ellison is happy developing products, marketing and letting the execution parts to someone else. Bill Gates is happy being Chief Software Architect and no one knows marketing better than him. Narayana Murthy is as happy as ever being a chief mentor. Google founders are happy that their company is being run by Eric Schmidt. Hardly anyone actually even knows the name of Google founders.Biggest quality of entrepreneurs may be that they are happy in innovating and marketing; letting other people run operations.
Well, I don't have much of empirical data on this, but wherever I see, there is a strong evidence for what Mr. Drucker says. After all, it is Peter Drucker and no one has any questions about that.
Sunday, April 16, 2006
Walk the talk
Dear Friend:
You are reading this either by accident, or because you have interest on India. In either case, read on. You have all the right to carry a different opinion than I have. You have all the right to criticize me to the bone. You have all the right to post your comments right below my thoughts to communicate your thoughts.
Freedom of speech is a right. Actively practiced, at least in theory, in all modern democracies. Recently I heard from a friend, who lived for three long interesting years in Singapore, that it has different definition for the freedoms. Thought and action actively controlled by the state is borderline dictatorship. If that is what is being practiced, it is a wrong practice.
Human Resources has become a nice name in the corporate world. Similar to many other small words made to convey a packaged pre-defined aura of a meaning. Leaders have a huge responsibility when it comes to managing human resources. They wield the power to direct, restrain, channelize, activate, put into action, the humans who listen to them. To quote a famous comic strip, "With great power comes great responsibility". Leaders are sometimes created. Sometimes by accident. Sometimes through hard work. Some times through bloody wars, and sometimes thorough an electoral process. In a democratic society, the leaders chosen through a fiercely contested election almost always have the Himalayan task of leading more of opposers than supporters. Winning over the opposers is of as much importance as leading those who balloted one to power. A positive and a negative combined forms zero. For each negative that is converted to a positive, the opposing forces decreases by two. So a hard question to never to be ignored for a new leader is, how to win over the opposition?.
Yes, you are absolutely right. That is not an easy task. We are not looking for easy solutions here are we?. If there were a Silver Bullet, I'd have given up my first born for the cause. But there exists none (Neither the Silver Bullet, nor my first born).
A new leader can start by realizing that, he or she has the responsibility to lead every one who is not a leader in his circle to a better state. That is the simple definition for what a leader is supposed to do. The leader needs every helping hand from his circle to achieve the common goals. Any actions that will increase the negative charge should be avoided. Every action should convert as much negative charge in the circle to positive charge. Every action must be evaluated prior and post to plan and and measure.
The Human resource is the most important tool a new Leader has. A leader always leads humans. Even with technology advancing so much we do not see any leaders running around setting the goals and objectives of a bunch of Computers, do we?. Lucky us, I must say!!. Time is the constraint many a new leaders has. There is a fixed term, and then uncertainty beyond. The results are important, and the resources to start with are few. End of the term the new leader gets his report card which lists the number of things he or she achieved, not the number of things he or she 'thought of achieving'. I say, do not worry about it. There are umpteen things in this world which you do not have control over. You are not going to be the last leader either. If the number of negative charges you converted to positive are large enough, either you or someone who thinks and acts very similar to you is going to succeed you. Leader, apart from the charisma and oratory skills has a defined set of characteristics. The styles may be different; but the objectives are not.
India needs leaders; India needs young leaders. It is time, IIM's concentrate an elective on political leadership. A coherent approach and study on successful leadership styles, coupled with the correct management techniques will go a long way in channelizing our tremendous human capital.
I grew up in an era where family planning advertisements adorned the highway sides. Now, suddenly both India and China are waking up and realizing that population is a capital. Channelized thought and action will take India a long way ahead.
If you have traveled by Train through India you will see a lot of uninhabited land. Hundreds of kilometers of stretches in most of the states, where the only human being you may come across will be a small line of women balancing pots of water on their head walking back to some destination you cannot see. Those are the places where our human capital needs to be distributed on. Lets us have a clear strategy to identify places to build new cities. Let us identify the local resource availability at these places. Let us pick the Industries, and crops for those places. Let us mine out all those rock lands for construction work, Let us explore our land and the sea to get to our much needed natural resources.
A booming stock market and a booming real estate market in the cities does not mean anything in the long run. What matters is what is the GDP. Gross Domestic Production. How much we manufacture in our factories and how much we reap out of our agricultural land.
A thriving economy cannot sustain growth without providing the much needed infrastructure. The growth of China is so different from the boom in India. China is decades ahead of India in that, it is now starting to show the results of a well thought out plan to utilize its human resources by providing the necessary infrastructure. But it is not a race with China that we are on. Our objective is to get Indians to a better state by channelizing the potent energy.
I hope I have made my introductory post to outline my thoughts at a macro level. I believe India needs young leaders who could strategically build infrastructure and channelize the human capital for a better India. My future posts will elaborate this outline.
Stay tuned, and Jai Hind!!
You are reading this either by accident, or because you have interest on India. In either case, read on. You have all the right to carry a different opinion than I have. You have all the right to criticize me to the bone. You have all the right to post your comments right below my thoughts to communicate your thoughts.
Freedom of speech is a right. Actively practiced, at least in theory, in all modern democracies. Recently I heard from a friend, who lived for three long interesting years in Singapore, that it has different definition for the freedoms. Thought and action actively controlled by the state is borderline dictatorship. If that is what is being practiced, it is a wrong practice.
Human Resources has become a nice name in the corporate world. Similar to many other small words made to convey a packaged pre-defined aura of a meaning. Leaders have a huge responsibility when it comes to managing human resources. They wield the power to direct, restrain, channelize, activate, put into action, the humans who listen to them. To quote a famous comic strip, "With great power comes great responsibility". Leaders are sometimes created. Sometimes by accident. Sometimes through hard work. Some times through bloody wars, and sometimes thorough an electoral process. In a democratic society, the leaders chosen through a fiercely contested election almost always have the Himalayan task of leading more of opposers than supporters. Winning over the opposers is of as much importance as leading those who balloted one to power. A positive and a negative combined forms zero. For each negative that is converted to a positive, the opposing forces decreases by two. So a hard question to never to be ignored for a new leader is, how to win over the opposition?.
Yes, you are absolutely right. That is not an easy task. We are not looking for easy solutions here are we?. If there were a Silver Bullet, I'd have given up my first born for the cause. But there exists none (Neither the Silver Bullet, nor my first born).
A new leader can start by realizing that, he or she has the responsibility to lead every one who is not a leader in his circle to a better state. That is the simple definition for what a leader is supposed to do. The leader needs every helping hand from his circle to achieve the common goals. Any actions that will increase the negative charge should be avoided. Every action should convert as much negative charge in the circle to positive charge. Every action must be evaluated prior and post to plan and and measure.
The Human resource is the most important tool a new Leader has. A leader always leads humans. Even with technology advancing so much we do not see any leaders running around setting the goals and objectives of a bunch of Computers, do we?. Lucky us, I must say!!. Time is the constraint many a new leaders has. There is a fixed term, and then uncertainty beyond. The results are important, and the resources to start with are few. End of the term the new leader gets his report card which lists the number of things he or she achieved, not the number of things he or she 'thought of achieving'. I say, do not worry about it. There are umpteen things in this world which you do not have control over. You are not going to be the last leader either. If the number of negative charges you converted to positive are large enough, either you or someone who thinks and acts very similar to you is going to succeed you. Leader, apart from the charisma and oratory skills has a defined set of characteristics. The styles may be different; but the objectives are not.
India needs leaders; India needs young leaders. It is time, IIM's concentrate an elective on political leadership. A coherent approach and study on successful leadership styles, coupled with the correct management techniques will go a long way in channelizing our tremendous human capital.
I grew up in an era where family planning advertisements adorned the highway sides. Now, suddenly both India and China are waking up and realizing that population is a capital. Channelized thought and action will take India a long way ahead.
If you have traveled by Train through India you will see a lot of uninhabited land. Hundreds of kilometers of stretches in most of the states, where the only human being you may come across will be a small line of women balancing pots of water on their head walking back to some destination you cannot see. Those are the places where our human capital needs to be distributed on. Lets us have a clear strategy to identify places to build new cities. Let us identify the local resource availability at these places. Let us pick the Industries, and crops for those places. Let us mine out all those rock lands for construction work, Let us explore our land and the sea to get to our much needed natural resources.
A booming stock market and a booming real estate market in the cities does not mean anything in the long run. What matters is what is the GDP. Gross Domestic Production. How much we manufacture in our factories and how much we reap out of our agricultural land.
A thriving economy cannot sustain growth without providing the much needed infrastructure. The growth of China is so different from the boom in India. China is decades ahead of India in that, it is now starting to show the results of a well thought out plan to utilize its human resources by providing the necessary infrastructure. But it is not a race with China that we are on. Our objective is to get Indians to a better state by channelizing the potent energy.
I hope I have made my introductory post to outline my thoughts at a macro level. I believe India needs young leaders who could strategically build infrastructure and channelize the human capital for a better India. My future posts will elaborate this outline.
Stay tuned, and Jai Hind!!
Jama Masjid blasts
It was shocking to learn about Jama Masjid blasts. It is as barbaric as Akshadharm or Ayodhya attack. It is as cruel as attack on religious places in Iraq. It is as cruel as bringing down babri masjid. There is no justification for attack on religious places. There is no explanation for terrorism. There was no other period in the history of mankind where innocent people were terrorized.
We need more assertion from every community in opposing terrorism. Every honorable citizen of India condemns these incidents of spreading terror. I want to see more assertion of muslims as a community in condmening these incidents. There are tons of great leaders in India from Muslim community. They need to condemn this as leaders of our country as well as leaders of Muslim community. There are two roles for these leaders mainly because we need good life in our country and we need good quality of religious harmony in our society. Good harmony starts at one's own religion.
I was personally very happy when Advani decided to start communicate the right message of what he stands for, when he commented on Jinnah. It could have been obviously one of the most effective stands taken in terms religious and sectarian harmony in the country. We need to shed age-old meaningless root causes and concetrate on quality of life of our citizens. We need to concentrate on development of basic amenities.
Any incidents that come in the way of development should be condemned by everybody. What we need is not bomb blasts - we need long lasting physical, spiritual, intellectual infrastructures. We need to stimulate great indian dream.
We need more assertion from every community in opposing terrorism. Every honorable citizen of India condemns these incidents of spreading terror. I want to see more assertion of muslims as a community in condmening these incidents. There are tons of great leaders in India from Muslim community. They need to condemn this as leaders of our country as well as leaders of Muslim community. There are two roles for these leaders mainly because we need good life in our country and we need good quality of religious harmony in our society. Good harmony starts at one's own religion.
I was personally very happy when Advani decided to start communicate the right message of what he stands for, when he commented on Jinnah. It could have been obviously one of the most effective stands taken in terms religious and sectarian harmony in the country. We need to shed age-old meaningless root causes and concetrate on quality of life of our citizens. We need to concentrate on development of basic amenities.
Any incidents that come in the way of development should be condemned by everybody. What we need is not bomb blasts - we need long lasting physical, spiritual, intellectual infrastructures. We need to stimulate great indian dream.
Friday, April 07, 2006
Leadership
Alright, it has been a while that I blogged. Few people told me that they read my blog; great! It inspired me to come back and write more!
As a child or even as a teenager I used to wonder why do leaders get the importance that they do get. Nitish Kumar for example, is a simple man - I could be the chief minister of Bihar as well! What is the difference? I could be a leader as well.... in fact I did - I was a student leader all along my life. The real leadership role that made me realize the leadership importance was at my Engineering College. Let us talk about it some other day.
Next leadership role I was with was at Entelligentia - I was not so good as a leader. I lacked communicating; I lacked leading the team to a successful venture. I was extremely fortunate to have 5 excellent partners - Boni, Mahesh, Jagadeesh, Raveesh and Sunu, who are also excellent leaders. I am fortunate because they accepted a sacrifice at the end of the venture.
Leaders are unique in their own way. I always want to learn what makes a person a good leader. Influence is probably one of the most characterizing qualities of a leader. Be it influence through hard work, or influence through speech, writing, demonstrated work, thoughts, charisma - what not.
Somebody once said - the power of faith and love are unbeatable. Leaders may be those who generate enormous amount faith in something and stand by it. Be it a country or an issue. Look at Advani and Ram Mandir. No leader other than Advani could so easily be associated with Ram Mandir. Leaders may be somebody who stand by their beliefs. Look at George Bush. No leader other than George Bush could be associated with war on terrorism. Look at Narayana Murthy with Indian IT industry. Look at Manamohan Singh with liberalization. Look at Mahatma Gandhi with non-violent war. Look at Budha with Nirvana. Look at Romeo with love. John Doer with Venture Capital. Everyone had one faith and they stood by it to become leaders.
Well.... my learning continues. May be somebody will standby for entrepreneurship in India and transform.
As a child or even as a teenager I used to wonder why do leaders get the importance that they do get. Nitish Kumar for example, is a simple man - I could be the chief minister of Bihar as well! What is the difference? I could be a leader as well.... in fact I did - I was a student leader all along my life. The real leadership role that made me realize the leadership importance was at my Engineering College. Let us talk about it some other day.
Next leadership role I was with was at Entelligentia - I was not so good as a leader. I lacked communicating; I lacked leading the team to a successful venture. I was extremely fortunate to have 5 excellent partners - Boni, Mahesh, Jagadeesh, Raveesh and Sunu, who are also excellent leaders. I am fortunate because they accepted a sacrifice at the end of the venture.
Leaders are unique in their own way. I always want to learn what makes a person a good leader. Influence is probably one of the most characterizing qualities of a leader. Be it influence through hard work, or influence through speech, writing, demonstrated work, thoughts, charisma - what not.
Somebody once said - the power of faith and love are unbeatable. Leaders may be those who generate enormous amount faith in something and stand by it. Be it a country or an issue. Look at Advani and Ram Mandir. No leader other than Advani could so easily be associated with Ram Mandir. Leaders may be somebody who stand by their beliefs. Look at George Bush. No leader other than George Bush could be associated with war on terrorism. Look at Narayana Murthy with Indian IT industry. Look at Manamohan Singh with liberalization. Look at Mahatma Gandhi with non-violent war. Look at Budha with Nirvana. Look at Romeo with love. John Doer with Venture Capital. Everyone had one faith and they stood by it to become leaders.
Well.... my learning continues. May be somebody will standby for entrepreneurship in India and transform.
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