Tuesday, May 31, 2005

Why India will rule the world ?

OK. Here is another economist arguing for India.

It is always interesting to see the underlying assumptions and risks that could make the projections off target.

The Risks

However, Dr William T Wilson warns that India's smart rise towards the position of an economic powerhouse could be marred by the following events:

Armed conflicts: With Pakistan or other neighbours.

Energy sources

1. India lacks adequate domestic energy sources and finding foreign energy sources to satisfy demand will not be easy.

2. India's oil import share will rise from 60% to 80% by the year 2030.

3. Government spending and fiscal deficits

4. Government continues to find it impossible to control its own spending.

5. Combined deficits of central and state governments are at 10% of GDP.

AIDS

India currently has the second highest number of AIDS cases after South Africa.

Friday, May 20, 2005

Indra Nooyi - Career

Indra Nooyi's career sure is a dream come true for most MBA students and company executives. I just ran a quick background check on her on Bloomberg. From Mettur to Pepsico President is cool !!

Education

Yale Univ, master's degree, public & private management

Madras Christian College, bachelor's degree

Indian Inst of Mgmt Calcutta, Master's degree, finance & management

Career

5/2001-PRESENT PEPSICO INC PRESIDENT/CFO
2/2000-5/2001 PEPSICO INC SENIOR VP/CFO
1994-2/2000 PEPSICO INC SENIOR VP
Strategic Planning, Corporate Strategy and Development
1990-1994 ASEA BROWN BOVERI INC SENIOR VP
Strategy, Planning and Strategic Marketing
1988-1990 MOTOROLA INC VP
As well as Director of Corporate Strategy and Planning
1986-1988 MOTOROLA INC VARIOUS POSITIONS
Business Development, Automotive Division
1980-1986 BOSTON CONSULTING GROUP DIRECTOR
International Corporate Strategy Products

Prior to joining Boston Consulting Group, Ms. Nooyi served as a Product Manager with Johnson & Johnson and Mettur Beardsell Ltd



Pay Packet


Company Year Salary Bonus Total 000's
PEPSICO INC 2004 767 1845 2612 USD
2003 721 1487 2208 USD
2002 700 1350 2050 USD
2001 681 1526 2207 USD
2000 575 791 1366 USD
1999 460 489 949 USD
1998 388 204 592 USD
1997 338 407 745 USD

.

The Indra Nooyi controversy

Indra Nooyi is one of IIMC's celebrated alumni and is President/CFO of PepsiCo Inc., People have wrought up a stupid controversy alleging she showed the 'middle finger' to America.

The Economic Times Article : Nooyi's mid-finger makes US see red

The index finger is Europe, pointing the way up; the ring finger is Latin America, sensual and romantic (think Salma Hayek or J-Lo); the thumb is Asia, proud and aspiring; the little finger is the Dark Continent, while the middle finger - yes, you guessed it - is the United States of America.

Soon, the incident had blogworld all aflutter. “It would certainly be a shame if the president of PepsiCo had gotten rich on America, while she was gallivanting around college campuses claiming that the US was giving the middle finger to the rest of the world. That would not be cricket, would it?” asked one of the blogs.

“Remember that the middle finger - the US - always stands out. If you are smart, if you exhibit emotional intelligence as well as academic intelligence, if you ascribe positive intent to all your actions on the international business stage, this can be a great advantage,” she concludes.


Apparently, ET claims this issue has caused a blog-storm. A quick Technorati search threw up 64 posts. Im not sure if this is a blog-storm.

Pepsico was quick to react. This is Indra Nooyi's clarification (Full Text of the speech):

As part of this illustration, I assigned five of the world’s continents to the different fingers and thumb. I refer to North America and particularly the U.S. as the middle finger because it is the longest and anchors every function the hand performs. The middle finger also is key to all the fingers working together effectively. That is how I view America’s place of importance in the world.

The point of my analogy was to emphasize America’s leadership position. Equally critical is the need for each of us as citizens to take a constructive role in whatever we choose to do in life to ensure the U.S. continues as the world’s “helping hand.”


Does not make sense from the angle of both parties. Either the bloggers/newspapers should have sense enough to understand Ms.Nooyi , President of PepsiCo, would not choose a graduation ceremony to show her country the middle-finger. Atleast, Ms.Nooyi or her speech-writer should have sense enough to know what the middle-finger signifies.

Trilogians are CA champions

This is incredible. A TU2K4 project wins $400,000 !! For the uninitiated, TU stands for Trilogy University, which you have to get through to become part of the league of Trilogians. TU has been covered by Fortune magazine I guess but I dont have any weblink right now.

Shift2Ingres, an Oracle migration toolkit submitted by Harsh Azad, Rohit Gaddi, Achal Rastogi, Geetanjali Bahuguna and Ashutosh Upadhyay of New Delhi won the largest prize of $400,000.

Team profile -- Shift2Ingres

Harsh Azad: Harsh is a Technical Analyst with Trilogy E-Business Software India Pvt Ltd He holds a master's degree in computer science from University of Pune. Harsh has won prizes and contests on computer programming organised by The Computer Society of India and South East Asian Regional Computer Confederation during college days.

Rohit Gaddi: Rohit is a Technical Analyst with Trilogy E-Business Software India Pvt. Ltd. He holds master's degree in computer application from Pune University. Rohit was ranked 37th in a recently held Google India Code Jam 2005. He was also a Junior Research Fellow with Computer Science Department, Pune University from July- Nov 2002. Rohit was ranked amongst the top 1 percentile in NCST entrance 2001.

Achal Rastogi: Achal is working with Trilogy E-business Software (I) Pvt Ltd for past one year. He holds master's degree in computer application from National Institute of Technology, Trichy. Achal's areas of interest include Databases, Data Structures and Operating Systems. Besides winning the Ingres Million Dollar Challenge, Achal secured 2nd rank (all India) in DOEACC 'O' level exam recognised by the Union ministry of human resources and development.

Geetanjali Bahuguna: Geetanjali is a Technical Analyst with Trilogy E-business Software (I) Pvt. Ltd, Bangalore. An MCA from University of Pune, Geetanjali was a topper in college for all the three years during her bachelor's in mathematics from University of Delhi.

Ashutosh Upadhyay: Ashutosh is currently working with Trilogy E-Business Software (I) Pvt. Ltd, Bangalore. Ashutosh holds a bachelor's degree in computer science and Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee.

Thursday, May 19, 2005

Microsoft's Vision for an Identity Metasystem

Summary: The Identity Metasystem is an interoperable architecture for digital identity that assumes people will have several digital identities based on multiple underlying technologies, implementations, and providers. Using this approach, customers will be able to continue to use their existing identity infrastructure investments, choose the identity technology that works best for them, and more easily migrate from old technologies to new technologies without sacrificing nteroperability with others. This paper introduces the principles behind this approach in "The Laws of Identity"; it presents an open and interoperable architecture for building the metasystem, and it describes Microsoft's plans to participate in the identity metasystem. (12 printed pages)

Biocon Saga

on Forbes

The daughter of a brewmaster and a stay-at-home mom, Mazumdar-Shaw grew up in a progressive, middle-class family, which encouraged her to pursue an education instead of an arranged marriage. She returned to India in 1975 after getting a B.S. in zoology at the University of Bangalore and an M.S. in brewing from Ballarat College in Australia, expecting to have to fend off job offers. No one would hire her. "It was too rough a job for a woman," she recalls being told.

There will be a flood of money coming in from America, as well. As U.S. drug development costs soar, pharmas are looking to India, where expenses from molecule to market can run 80% less. Partnerships with seven of the largest U.S. and European pharmaceuticals--in drug discovery and clinical trials--now account for 15% of Biocon's top line

Sunday, May 15, 2005

Intel's New direction

on Economist

Well, Intel has a new CEO and he has a tough task at hand with Moore's law meeting a physical roadblock and AMD chipping away its market share. It has other problems too ..

  1. With AMD making its 32-bit processors compatible with 64-bit code, Intel faces the risk of Itanium becoming obsolete
  2. Will Intels new strategy of focussing on rwhole platforms (combine associated chips and software along with the core processor) work ?
  3. Will Dell continue patronizing Intel ?
  4. How will Intel win the mobile game ?

With 80% market-share in PC business, it will be interesting to see how Intel reacts to the innovation challenge that it faces in the mobile era ...

Friday, May 13, 2005

India ranked 49 in E-Readiness

on Economist

Denmark is No.1.
US No.2
Japan 21
Taiwan 22
India 49
China 54 (some sadistic pleasure !!)

Denmark is still the best place in the world to do e-business, reports the Economist Intelligence Unit, a sister firm of The Economist. It has ranked the “e-readiness” of the world's 65 largest economies to find the countries most amenable to internet-based business. The factors considered include broadband and mobile-phone penetration, as well as government regulation. America rose from sixth to second place in the ranking since last year. Britain fell from second to fifth place. India, despite being an IT superpower, is ranked only 49th.

Thursday, May 12, 2005

Joel on Bad Code

on Joel

Look for coding conventions that make wrong code look wrong. Getting the right information collocated all together in the same place on screen in your code lets you see certain types of problems and fix them right away.

Wednesday, May 11, 2005

The Retailing Industry

A very good article on the world Retailing Industry and implications for India.

American mass retailing began in the late 1800s with Montgomery Ward marketing its products through general merchandise mail order catalogs, which was very effective at that time for reaching a largely rural society.

In the 1940s, the population began its movement to the suburbs as the economy shifted from an agricultural base to an industrialised nation. The first shopping center was opened, which would eventually be a significant factor in the decline of downtown retailing in the 1960s and 70s. JCPenney and Sears began their national mass retailing expansion, and the use of credit cards as major retail chains began. .......


Tuesday, May 10, 2005

CNN : Viral Marketing or Spam ?

on Wired

Earlier this month, blogger Nick Lewis noticed a strange post about CNN on his blog. The comment was critical of some new shows on CNN, but also included detail about the shows, their show times and the anchors hosting them. The same terms were repeated over and over, making it appear like spam. Something was not right.

Hackathon

on Bnoopy

Sustaining innovation for a startup, a rip off from Google's 20% idea.

We call it a "hackathon" and we got inspiration from the good folks at Atlassian. The idea is that you make a day-long event (at whatever frequency you want) where everyone works on something that is:

  • valuable to the company
  • but not what they're "supposed" to be working on and
  • that can be taken from idea to working prototype in one day

We started our hackathon at 9:00am and ended at 8:00pm. From 8:00-10:00pm we did presentations where each team member or group showed their work.

Tuesday, May 03, 2005

SNAP : News Filter

A pretty cool and easy way to find a particular news piece you are looking for. You can use multiple filters to narrow down your search.