Indians are Brand Conscious

This is from LiveMint. They say that Indians rank third in the world in terms of being brand conscious. The study further says that Indians are not only conscious about the imported brands but also know about the domestic brands as well. Heres a quote –

In a luxury brands survey conducted by The Nielsen Company, a global information and media research company, India ranked third after Greece and Hong Kong in the list of most brand conscious countries in the world.

And if you look at it, its true! Heck, I just bought an iPod … I would categorize Apple as a luxury brand. Just take a look around you, and you will see brands everywhere …

  • He is an IIM grad
  • I just took a Kingfisher flight, the air hostesses were worth it
  • Moods please
  • It’s a SONY
  • One Signature large please

Need I say more?

Customer Orientation

Are the modern sales guys really selling to us what we need? Or are they selling to us what they want to sell?

A couple of years back I had applied for a silver credit card (this was when I was a student). The card (Citibank) was good enough for me to use during my student days. And the great part about it was that my father booted the bill!! Once the job had started, the card was no longer needed, and soon it expired. I applied for one more credit card, to my chagrin, this time Citibank never responded. No issues, ye nahi to koi aur sahi … so saying, I got another card.

Now, some months back, they sent me a renewed credit card – an exact replica of my expired card … with my student photo as well (I was so “thin” back then!). This time around I feel no need for one more credit card; its almost equivalent to one more headache. Who has got time for paying those pesky monthly bills which always crop up when your bank account is doing the balancing act of the century (SideNote – bank balance is an oxymoron!!)

So, I tell them that I have no need for a card, can they destroy the card? Sadly, they advise me that the paperwork involved will be too much for them and for me. I believe them like a dimwit, and now I am still carrying my student credit card. I have no intention of using it. Upto this part, I am fine with it.

For the past week or so, everyday I recieve a call from our friendly next door Citibank salesguy intimating me that I have been selected for upgrading my card to an International Gold card (as if!!). I tell him that I am not interested in increasing my credit limit, every time. Still the calls keep on coming. Are they really listening or are they simply following through motions? If they are doing the later, then why bother with the futile exercise?

Interviews

Have you ever been in an interview thinking “What am I doing here?” … its probably a good thing if you have not been in such a scenario. I have been unfortunate enough to be in such a situation while being on both sides of the table viz., interviewee and interviewer. Being the interviewer is much more fun and a lot more relaxing.

Some of the things to watch out for if you ever are stuck in such a situation –

  • Ask yourself this – Are you that desperate that you want to be in such a situation to filter out those maybes from the definitely nots? If yes, then please fire away
  • Look at the time, it is a precious commodity. If the person you are interviewing is tryign to mislead the interview, remember you decide when the interview stops, do not feel afraid of being too rude
  • Some candidates can really be upto-no-good, drop them at the first sight. Do not entertain such people further … its an injustice to them if they think that they are worthy of showing interest. I once ended up wasting a good hour trying to find out why did the candidate apply for what he did … answer was simple … employment
  • Have your HR/Recruitment guys screen them at the start itself, this eliminates all the definitely nots from the list
  • If that person has applied for a role in your department, ask a simple question to yourself … would you want to see this face daily? There is a lot more to face value than just the face

Will post more my experiences as soon as I manage to reconcile those resumes.

Microsoft to open up?

Microsoft has started to take the power of the development community seriously. In a press conference yesterday, they have put a very verbose official release regarding increasing the interoperability of all the high volume MS products by releasing and maintaining documentation of their APIs on their site. As quoted from Steve Ballmer,

For the past 33 years, we have shared a lot of information with hundreds of thousands of partners around the world and helped build the industry, but today’s announcement represents a significant expansion toward even greater transparency. Our goal is to promote greater interoperability, opportunity and choice for customers and developers throughout the industry by making our products more open and by sharing even more information about our technologies.

Read the complete release here.

The products whose APIs would be released are Windows Vista (including the .NET Framework), Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, Office 2007, Exchange Server 2007, and Office SharePoint Server 2007, and future versions of all these products.

Can we have someone look into the revenue of these products as well?

Translated, will now have to buy a license and become a registered member of MSDN to understand the APIs for the “high volume products”.

Addendum
RedHat was not so much impressed with this release, read more of it here.

Business World

Theres a section of Business World which is Quick take, the question of the next week’s issue was posted to me via through a friend.

The Indian IT industry has several set backs –

  1. Lack real technology work – with around 60% of the work lying in the AMC and Testing (Support) bracket, there is dearth of scope for your average Indian techie to get their digits (pun intended) dirty in some concrete techie work.
  2. Project orientation – Most of the biggies in the Indian IT industry are service oriented, and more concerned with projects for foriegn customers. Their business orientation is towards projects, so much so that the entire organization bases its financials upon projects and their profitability. It may seem as a sweeping statement, but think about it, projects for the same client cumulate into an account. Accounts cumulate into a Geography. How this is bad is that there is no focus on IT products in the market.
  3. PPP of economies – How can one sustain themselves on pure projects alone? Esp. those that are based on a foreign economy. The moment the domestic economy starts doing better than the foreign economy (read those of the clients), the cost of the project rises (either for the firm or for the client). To remain competitive vis-a-vis other foriegn IT vendors, the indian firm will have to drop rates, losing profitability.
  4. Attrition – With an average attrition of around 15%, the costs of a project are constantly going up. Whenever a resource switches to a new firm, he gets a pay hike. A pay hike translates into more costs for the same resource. More costs without increasing revenues results in reduction of profitability.

That was my answer, I was a little surprised to learn that theres such a small amount of people who agree with me. No matter, it will be a good thing for India if I am wrong ;-).