Journey homewards: A photo tale

I created a photo album earlier when I was at ISB.

Here is a link to the album.

I created one on IIM-A campus as well. If you would like to view it, please send me a mail. I will email it to you.

Chennai lovers.. here are some good scenes

These pictures were shot yesterday around 11:30 pm. While coming from work, I noticed the wet roads shining under the street lights and went ahead to grab the opportunity. And there you go.. we (my roomie Amit and I) clicked several pictures and bingo.. it started raining again! Well, thank you. I always wanted to shoot rain drops. I got under a tree and started shooting. The one below is the first in rain. And then... batteries went down! what a timing! and it was pouring! Suddenly rain was an inconvenience... We ran until we reached home.


I want to call this snap Malgudi. Cozy and homely street (see that 'school ahead' sign?)




this is Coral Reef... ;) this is a tree just under the street light.

What makes successful entreprenuers?

What differentiates successful entreprenuers for others? Is it their personal network? Hard work? Vision?

Jeff Cornwall says it is the ability to spot opportunities. Business Pundit agrees.

Jeff:

If we look at what differentiates successful entrepreneurs from the unsuccessful ones, the most important craft is opportunity recognition. This is a process that we have learned how to systematize and teach to entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurs who have the most success are those who are able to find a real niche in the market that offers enough of a margin to meet their needs and aspirations. Successful entrepreneurs understand the importance of "failing on paper." They carefully assess their idea to make certain that it has an adequate market and enough profit margin before they ever launch their venture.

As more and more entrepreneurs are being trained worldwide, it is this one skill, this one technology, that is having the biggest impact on their success.

Opportunity lies in the "eyes of the beholder." If you "look" for opportunities, you will "find" them.

I am tempted to compare entreprenuership with photography. Cos, photographers just look for opportunities (sunrises, places with natural beauty etc.) to shoot. I will say Photography is 80% right place and right time and 20% skill.

Coming back to entreprenuership, Prof. Venkataraman taught us cases in which he asked us if there was opportunity that the protagonist could after. Most of us in the class thought there wasn't. He then tweaked the numbers here and there and showed us the opportunity that we were looking for. I guess successful enterprenuers "see" this opportunity to change the game - and numbers in their favor.

Twilight on the Marina

How often do you see this? If we get up at the 'usual time' aren't we missing a lot of fun?

These guys aren't missing any fun!

These guys playing cricket on the Marina aren't missing any fun. Just from the looks of it, Marina beach could rate among highest pitch-concentrated places!

Visitor's gallery

Spectators on a 'flexible-free-makeshift gallery'.

Initiatives to power the knowledge economy - Kiran Karnik

"India cannot achieve its real potential unless we have large numbers of people at the highest level of research in the universities."

Mr. Karnik regularly talks about such issues and writes articles with flashy titles. However if you really look into the article, you barely find anything new. For.e.g. this article is a listing of issues and possible cliche and incomplete answers to problems. However he does make a couple of good points. One is given above in italics and second is about pulling crowd to Nasscom's HR meet in Chennai.

Payback time

I wrote about helping a couple of children in their education. And I mentioned about Rajat Gupta's message about paying back to society.

I started to do that in Chennai only in a different format. I am visiting an orphonage called "Samrakshan" where I have started to teach (from more than a month now) some subjects right now. The target is to enthuse them in studies and help them envision a career and growth for themselves. As of now, I have just targetted older children cos the younger children could afford to wait a little.

As of now the children seem to be enjoying it. Feedback is good and enouraging. They participate in weekly activities and volunteer to present some of the "lessons" themselves.


The next step is to get the children access to Internet (first to computers). I am planning to get this in the next one month.

Outsourcing: Negotiating a perfect fit

This good article from Nasscom tells you what is important in negotiating a good contract and throws light on sticky issues in outsourcing.

Nasscom to set up database of BPO employees

Nasscom is planning to set up a database of BPO employees. "It is expected to include details like police checks, photographs and biometrics like fingerprints." This may add to the security of the BPO companies to some extent but will not prevent the likes of Msource incidents.

This could reduce attrition. However, it is voluntary for employees to register on the database. Success of this database will depend on the network effects (more the percentage of employees who enroll in the database, greater its effectiveness and the pressure on the others employees to enrool themselves.

Are tech companies short-sighted?

Technology companies reduced entry level salaries to well below what we thought was threshold limit of an engineer's salary. I personally know many who expressed concern over the reduction.
Are the tech companies doing it right? How will this strategy of taking advantage of the increase in supply impact short and long term supply of this industry?

are tech cos that reduced entry level engineer's salaries to sub 15K levels overkilling the opportunity that free markets gave them? Is there any "ethics" involved in this?

Pictures from Kerala trip

I really wanted to post my comments on each of the pictures when I posted these pictures first.
It's high time I did it.
This picture was taken in Kumarakom bird santuary. The Kerala tourism department has a good hotel there and bird sanctuary is "embedded" in the hotel.

Shooting birds is a pain in the neck... literally. It's hot sun on your head... Birds fly too fast for a camera... you have to look through the camera while you are waiting for the birds and hush.. there went a bird... it just flew and you had no clue and the camera was too late to respond. You just ended up with a an empty sky shot... too bad.. the next bird flew.. but it is too high.. so.. nothing again... then comes the next bird that barely managed to enter your camera... and there you go.. this is that shot. The good part is.. it looks good!

I would say shooting birds (that could be an offence in some act or the other... I only mean taking pictures) is difficult.


This picture is different in a couple of ways. First - it was shot from a train. Second, it looks like a flame blazing out of the earth. This is a sun set shot when the sun is just about to set and a small hill came in between. This shot is the result.


This picture is a sunrise shot at Kanyakumari. Other than the fact that you can watch both the sunrise and the sunset there, both are very beautiful as well. I must say I was lucky on that day to see such a beautiful scene because at times, you could return empty handed of there is an overdose of clouds on that day. e.g. I went for a sunrise today (Jly 17th, 2005) to Marina beach and all I saw was coulds!





This picture once again was shot from the train on the starting day of my trip. So this was in Hyd. I will call this picture "God's Decent."

Options reset?

I heard that the CEO of OfficeTiger is only 34 years old. An article on this guy appeared in BusinessWeek this week.

http://www.businessweek.com/cgi-bin/register/archiveSearch.cgi?h=05_28/b3942429.htm

He ventured out at 29! Does this reset my clock? and do I have to revisit my timelines?

Another question... Are options (read industries) that I considered before I joined the current role still open to me? Or Are those options closed to me ?

Want to rename my blog

I would like to rename my blog. Any ideas for a smooth transition from the current one to the proposed one?

Graduation!

Long time no see! I could not post often (at all!) since I left ISB.

Here were my thoughts on the graduation day... unedited... (unproofed!)

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Graduation!

I graduated today and i feel like recording my thoughts. Today has been a great day indeed. ISB has not been a peaceful place that it always is. There is a festive look all around the campus. There are students in their graduation attire, their parents, friends, members of governing board and professors all very well dressed with smiles and expectations for the day.

A number of things distinguish this day and this day turned out to be very special part of the reason being that I expected very little out of it

When I was walking down the aisle, towards the stage, parents and visitors were seated on either sides of aisle eagerly looking towards the procession. I could see expectations in their eyes and I felt very responsible while I walked towards the aisle.

First: Dignatories – Today's chief guest was Daniel Vasella. And with him were Rajat Gupta, Rajendra Pawar (NIIT), Anil Ambani, Prof Jagmohan Raju, Kiran Majumdar Shaw and other very distinguished personalities. It showed how much those dignatories backed ISB. Rajat Gupta narrated an incident in which Mr. Gupta approached Vasella for support (financing in particular) and asked for a million dollars. Mr. Gupta wanted to quote a very big figure. After a few weeks, there comes a check from Mr. Vasella for TWO million dollars and with a note: You are a very smart man but you need more money than you think!

The message that Mr. Rajat Gupta delivered is very special and is close to my heart.

First and foremost: Learning attitude matters a lot more than specifics of immediate employment. One may land up with any assignment anywhere... but what matters is one's own learning attitude and learn from any assignment.

Exceed expectations in any job.

Your success depends on how much you team up with and help others succeed.

Invest in learning: Do not approach your job just as to how you should get your promotion or your next job but invest in learning all the skills that are required to do the job well.

Own set of values: Have your own set of values and be guided by those values

Give back to society: Do not think that you will first be successful and then give back to society. Start giving back to society as early as possible and make it a habit. He said he would have been happier had he learnt this earlier.

Message from Mr. Vasella

Mr. Vasella is a very 'imaginative' speaker. He had given us a glimpse of what we can expect from the 'real world' in a 'picturisque' lecture. It is hard to describe it. But he broadly spoke about what to expect and the values one should have.

My parens were very happy today. It's good to see them happy though I am slighly disappointed that the pomp and show of a graduation day was required to make them happy. Ideally I would like to see them happy for the choices I made and what I am rather than such incidents. But am happy anyway.

Finally I completed the course... yuppie... its good to complete it. This is a culimation of my plans initiated around three years back. When I sat in Infy doing some junk work. My plans involved moving to a better role in Infy to which I transitioned to and got excellent experience and then do an MBA. Am glad I did it.

The year book 2005 came out today. It is a wonderfully made book with each student's picture and very spicey introduction to each one of them. Brilliant work classmates!

Very unexpected, but a chance came to me to practice values on the first day of my graduation. My ISB graduation certificate was supposed to be given directly to HDFC because of my loan. However by mistake, ISB put it in my pack of documents I collected. I promptly gave it back to ISB reminding them the loan clause. I am glad I did it.

My first few clicks and a competition

ISB's Photography club conducted a competition. I won a (second!) prize and I feel sooo good about it. Is it beginner's luck?

And this is me clicking my way through the competition!

Another one

Another one.

Cheers... Chanakya

Picture from Vizag trip

This is one of the good pictures I clicked in Vizag trip.

Cheers... Chanakya

Tour to Vishakhapattanam

I have been to Vishakhapattanam and Araku valley for the past three days. I clicked some good photos. Will post them in a couple of days.

Cheers.. Chanakya

Offer from the last target company.. finally

Last of the target companies I am looking for has told me that it is open to making me an offer. This is a NY based high end BPO company with most of its operations in Chennai, NY and Columbo. Role is Exec Analyst to CEO. Details are being worked out.

This company effectively has delayed finalizing my placement. Tho i have other offers, they actually do not match this one. I will now go ahead and choose from the companies I have offers from.

All is well that ends well?