MyTake

Roughly around half a century back, Alvin Toffler was thinking and writing on how jobs, people, relationships and society shall change in the 21st century. Jack Ma might have barely started going to school by that time. During the World Economic Forum 2018 session, Jack Ma was talking about the future trend of work and sounding quite relevant when he was warning that automation would eat the kind of jobs that humans are doing today, so we need to have thinking shift and develop different kind of mindset. Ardent follower of Jack Ma, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, the man behind Paytm, is the richest billionaire under the age of 40 in 2018 according to a recent report. These people reflect on the call of time as they could think much ahead of times when it comes to market. In this backdrop when we look at the environment today, we find existence of impermanence, dominance of technology, transient social values, changing work schedules, emergence of multitasking, generic work portfolios ...

Government and industry face a dire challenge of responding to the expectations of the citizens. Government responds through public policy and industry through products and services. In independent India our economic policies were driven with a unique model of mixed economy whereby addressing industry and society. Welfare of the people was the primary concern and an intention of following Gandhi’s principles was initially visible. Gandhi who believed in small scale industries and village oriented economic policies had strong view on self-sufficiency concept which questioned western model of economic development. Nehru was all for socialistic pattern of society hiding away his thinking on capitalism. Nehru’s contribution is acknowledged in creating the temples of modern India. Or to say it laid the foundation of India’s economic development. Our grandparents always emphasized on the moral learnt through the story of Rabbit and the Tortoise – slow and steady, wins the race. It ...

Academia has always been differentiating a leader from a manager. And it is believed that a manager can transform himself/herself into a successful leader by learning the art of leadership and by developing those traits that a leader possesses. All business students and practicing managers have to deal with this dilemma often and to come to terms that ultimately if one has to manage affairs of business successfully and produce expected results, one has to have a perspective of a leader. This is something which needs further elaboration for the cause of clarity and for the purpose of practice. The whole idea of leadership stems from the sense of followership. No follower, no leader. So it is the followers who make a leader. Honest intent for the cause, art of articulating the vision, winning attitude, guts to take risk and providing rock solid support to the followers are some such virtues which help one to put forth efforts to attain organizational goal. The vision has to be f...

In the month of January, the prime minister of India, Narendra Modi launched Startup India Action Plan to encourage entrepreneurship and to facilitate startups. This Action Plan consists of detailed scheme of things and addresses the issues relating to obstacles which generally entrepreneurs have been facing. The bureaucratic hassles, problems in raising finances, and availability of networks to reach out to the customers have affected the conversion of idea into reality for many new starters. The fight between big and small, old and new has also been one of the deterrent to start a new venture.  Ever since the NDA Government took the office they have been pushing the industry and inviting foreign investments to boost economic growth. It has also created a positive market perception and corporates have welcomed the initiatives, though the hassles like passing of GST Bill by the parliament has posed political challenge and discouraged industry as a whole. It was around six ...

In   June2014 issue of SME World   I had talked of some challenges that newly elected government at the centre faces. The key expectations were identified as emphasis on rural entrepreneurship, entrepreneur-friendly regulation, skill development initiatives, and initiatives for coexistence of giant and tiny units. The new government took over the reign and introduced general budget on the floor of the house of parliament on 10 th   of July 2014, for the year ending March 2015. This annual document somehow provides an overview of the intentions and priorities of the newly elected government and further it is supposed to help us understand the direction in which the government is going to take initiatives. In this brief write up I shall like to discuss the provisions for MSME sector in this budget in the light of the expectations that I identified earlier. The budget proposes for constituting a committee   to examine the financial architecture, remove bottleneck...

Few years back while I was reading Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat, a thought kept penetrating my mind as to whether the transformations that were illustrated and explained really resulted in making the world flatter. There was a feel which was somehow hindering the entry of such belief that really the world is getting flatter, whether opening up of the economy has really helped India in appropriate distribution of wealth. Isn’t it a reality that big corporate houses and huge multinational corporations are killing small businesses and the opening up of the economy is in fact resulting in consolidation? This thought kept me busy for few months till I happen to read the views, comments and research papers by Harvard scholar, Pankaj Ghemawat and the world is flat began to sound more like an illusion, a fiction well defended and attributed to the success stories. I began to read comparative literature and kept an eye on the growth of Indian industries, especially small and medium ...

India lives in its villages. And India’s most important characteristic on which its strength rests is ‘unity in diversity’.  We have grown with this fact.  The belief that people residing in urban areas are better off than their counterparts toiling in the villages is highly relative.  It really depends as to what really one wants to look at, in tangible form or intangible form. Whatever the case be, it is evident from the practices that the back end support to industrial power houses is provided by this strong rural working population, working hard through their lives. The thinking that standard of living in the villages in tangible terms is poor or relatively bad, is obscure.  It has given birth to an idea of focusing on developing better infrastructure in the rural areas.  It is also necessitated out of issues related to migration (from rural areas to urban areas), which is posing a great challenge to the urban development departments of the respective go...

While I was waiting for a friend at city centre, Agartala, capital of this small state Tripura, I felt little uncomfortable. My head was getting heavy and I felt like vomiting. Something was blocking my throat. I tried locating a medicine shop and as I found one, I spotted my friend waving. It was around 7 in the evening.  I told him 'I am not feeling well' . He showed his concern and inquired the reason and diagnosed that it is gastric problem. He said we should have spicy tea at this stall (indicating the exact location of a tea vendor on a side). I avoided as I thought maybe it might spoil my stomach further. We started walking towards the other end and I started feeling better. Took a small bottle of soda and after few sips it made me little light. I was getting better. We reached back to city centre and he again suggested that better we have this tea. He had told me about this tea stall and its delicacy before. So I agreed and as we sipped tea I started admiring the t...

Recently Vijay Govindrajan, Professor of strategy at Dartmouth College, USA was asked – ‘ While Innovating, whom should companies target – local consumers or global ones? ’ His reply was:   ‘The focus has to be Indian consumers, especially Indian non-consumers.’   He divided India into three categories, namely   ‘Developed India’   (100 million people living in 15 major Indian cities), ‘ Developing India ’ (300 million people living in 6,000 small towns), and   ‘Underdeveloped India’   (700 million living in the 600,000 villages). He combined developing and underdeveloped India into one group of customers as non-consumers. The needs of these non-consumers have to be addressed in order to capitalize on the opportunity that India provides and it is possible through developing innovative products and services which cater to their pockets. These non-consumers pose a greater challenge for the corporate houses to attract their attention. Mo...