Category: Business

The Big Fat Geek’s thoughts on Business and how business processes can be automated via workflows and technology.

Quantity v/s Quality

Prasad Ajinkya2 Comments

Today Don and I tried out this new restaurant in Hyderabad, it seemed new; considering the fact that we had not noticed it earlier. Upon entering the restaurant at peak lunch hours, we saw that the place was like a graveyard … rows upon rows of empty seats. Thats not a very good sign, let me tell you at the outset.

We still decided to persist, it’s the never-say-never attitude combined with the kya-hi-farak-padta-hain attitude that pushed us. Prices were decent, we ordered our usual order … one meal and two rotis plus one more dish. This normally is enough for the two of us. Just about more than enough actually :-)

When the waiter came, he had his tray full with dishes … the quantity was huge .. big dishes and loads of dishes (what a meal!!!). It was enough for maybe 5 people, 6 even. The food quality was not that great, neither was the service … but pricing and quantity. Wow!

I wonder, what would have happened had the restaurateer focused on quality instead of quantity.

Knowledge Value Cycle

Prasad Ajinkya11 Comments

I was reading a friend’s blog about how he has decided to have a mission for his blog. Immediately in the comments, I put in that along with a mission, one should also have a vision to know where the mission is going. Now, while suggesting a good looking and smart sounding mission and vision, I came up with this term – Knowledge Value Chain (I wont edit the comment on Biggie’s blog). I do not claim to have invented this, since a quick google showed me that the term is already used and abused many times over. So heres one more to the count.

Small explanation:
The cycle is divided into six stages, with the ultimate stage or goal of knowledge is to be the guru, the one, the yin on that subject. Look at our education system for example, that should tell us how this process goes … initially we do only rote (remember those horrid 10th and 12th exams??) … as we go into graduation, the awareness increases, we start listening and finally understand that theres more to knowledge than rote (try doing Hearn & Baker of graphics or Algorithms by Thomas H. Cormen, Charles E. Leiserson, Ronald L. Rivest and Clifford Stein or any other thick book for that matter) … next comes the phase where you actually start learning yourself (that would be during your post graduation or job where there is no one there to teach you or learn from) … post which you become comfortable at internalizing a lot of information in a go … once it is internalized, you say … “hey, this stuff is awesome!!” … you want to spread the word … write blogs, talk with friends about it … you become an evangelist. People start looking up at you … they start saying … “yeah! he knows stuff” … you become a teacher.

Of course the process can be extended into a heightened form of knowledge cycle … thats when the teacher learns from his students. Interaction.

To IPL or to IPO?!?

Prasad Ajinkya5 Comments

This is a follow-up to Sudhir’s post on IPL. Yesterday I was reading the Economic times whilst the bai was cleaning my room (that’s the only time when I took a break from Sacred), and there it was … in the big headlines pattern.

IPL teams can raise capital through going public … or via private equity as well!! Imagine the Mumbai Indians being listed on the BSE, and everytime they have a match against some other team, the share prices would buckle, a cricket crazy nation … now putting their money where their mouth is. I am just waiting for those Sports Team Mutual Funds … wanna bet that Ravi Shastri launches one??

Autowallahs

Prasad Ajinkya9 Comments

Pffttt!! This is so awesome, being a business grad. makes me appreciate the way people think and do their daily business. The fact that I am getting robbed in broad daylight is irrelevant.

I moved to Hyderabad in the December of ’06, and I barely knew my way around. I thought myself very fortunate that the Autorickshaw stand was nearby and my friend knew some of them. Naturally, they operated on a fixed price basis. That sucked, since I knew they had a nice fat operating margin of 15%. I paid, I fell to the cartel’s ways … and soon everyone of them was earning supernormal profits at my expense.

This went on for 18 months, then the government of India hiked the petrol rates and inflation peaked to more than 11%. What that essentially meant for autos, was higher meter rates. Since what I was paying them was higher than the meter rates, I kept on paying the same amount. The smart buggers that they are, decided to hike up my fixed rates as well … upon this, I was quick to point out that my rate should not increase, since their costs are not increasing by a significant amount (Rs. 5 per litre, an auto which gives an avg of 24 kmpl and I have to go 8 km, which means an additional cost of Rs. 1.66).

For a couple of days, this worked. Today, they told me, that I am not profitable enough for them, and that their opportunity cost has gone up!! Indicating, that while they are dropping me off at my office at a normal profit level, they could be earning higher profits somewhere else as well. If only I had so much business sense when I was a b-schooler :-)

Convergence

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Read this in today’s morning news.

So MTNL has finally decided to go the developed country way. Opening up their offerings for not only other bulk buyers, but also for individuals like you and me. This means a stronger focus not on voice revenues, but on data revenues. 

A natural extension of this is Value Added Services (VAS) for fixed line networks. This trend makes more sense since MTNL was loosing market share of the customer’s talking time. The average Indian has stopped applying for land line since the mobile is readily available with cheaper and varied tariff rates. Heck, even I do not have landline number in Hyderabad! 

So, with India copying the trends of more developed nations like UK and US, it is only a few years when we see a mobile revolution taking place in our markets. The future is here, are you ready for it?

Suit Up!!

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Its an expression that Barney, from How I met your Mother (one of my favorite sitcoms) often says. Was going through daily RSS, when I came across this … a jacket for geeks who cant make their own pick-up lines. A small printer is fitted into the jacket along with sensors near the arms and heart to detect that change in the heart rate :-).

And voila!! You can be a casanova as well. Here’s a video demo of that piece!!