The Dheela Characterization

"Huh , its so hot here" - says the Girl. "Ya , you are here na that's why" - responds the Guy. The girl smiles and sighs away. The Guy gets closer. "Hey, what are you doing?" asks she worried by his advances. "MBA" - comes the instant reply. The girl smiles again , a laugh indeed.

A non-dheela guy would have perhaps switched on the AC to cool the 'heat' and got intimidated to not to proceed further once the girl spilled the "what are you doing?" question. And end up being touted as Dumbo, fattoo , not with the times- purane zamane ka and all such sort of things.

Salman being the dheel character he is , still could not get one Aishwarya or a Katrina. Do girls like to have a sling with a dheela character but finally settle with a non-dheela character. "Hum woh nahi he" claimed she on farewell day after 'spending' the full college years with him.

Many arrive as committed (few engaged too) , but gets extra-hooked inside the campus. 'Yahan bhi hona chaiye' syndrome?. After the college , the company perhaps too. 'Wahan bhi?' :)  Until they marry their non-dheela version of the other gene. Cool he woh if you don't know !

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X worked for 2 hours during weekend but made sure to call and mail his boss on some pretext or other every time he worked overtime. He gets a promotion in next cycle. Y works for 12 hours every weekend but genuinely try not to bother his boss during this time. He hears 'so early today?' from his boss when he starts leaving to see his ailing mother in hospital.

If both X and Y are in a knowledge based industry (say IT), in long term its Y which will make a bigger mark. The more hours you spent , the more you will learn(assuming you have the ability to do so) which will differentiate you. The X high will vanish soon. So is the dheela character a short term phenomena?

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There was this B-School with its so called very 'successful' more than 100% placements report making headlines in Pagalguy but i can still see their placement team scheduling interviews for their unplaced students in the market. The college inadvertently ranks amongst top 10 B-Schools in India.

Then there are slew of B-Schools which can go to any extent to win the fiercely fought placement war. Many organize/conduct so called 'Best Summer Project of the Year' contest. Get the project reports from the participating students from other competitive colleges thereby getting the details of the companies which they can pouch for themselves.

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Interview a few highly talented individuals on the pretext of a lucrative job opening , give them the complex problem during the selection rounds and once done by the candidates , reject them on some pretext - Few start-ups found out this very novel way of getting the complex work done which their workforce wasn't able to do !

A few others hire interns and then send them to their competitors as prospective customers or other avatars to get the inside info. 'Tum jhoot nahi bol sakte?' questions the guide in surprise.

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You are doomed if you start liking the ethics classes and give a slightest hint of it to your batch. And if you are in that always-studying mode least interested on the college excitement, either you are a bookworm or a behenji.

"Woh topper he, woh parhai karega and won't do any committee work" - said a 'popular' dheela character and everyone agreed. 

"Chi , kese batchmates mile hein" - one dheela taunted on the guy trying to curb ragging if any on campus. The President with him smiled.

Twitter T-Shirt Went Wrong

Don't have any idea who this girl is. The Twitter API seems to have gone wrong or a manual error while sorting out the profile pic for printing? Better to go for a replacement :(

PS: Don't crib about the image quality offered by a 3-year old dilapidated iPhone.

The First Day

The Beginning of the Social Media Stock Bubble?

Win this Exclusive Facebook T-Shirt

We are giving it away for free. There is absolutely no string attached.

Just participate in the poll below by guessing the price of this T-Shirt in Indian Rupees. The closest matching quote will be the winner. Lucky draw will be used for the matching closest quotes, if any, to pick the winning entry.

The Latest One

:)

PS: Don't crib about the image quality offered by a 3-year old dilapidated iPhone.

Will Facebook Kill Micropayment Sites?

Simple it is - You post a link or write a note and people liking it on Facebook. Now extend this simple use case - You get credit points from Facebook for each like on your wall and similarly credit points deducted for each like you make on other's wall. After the netting process, you are left with a lumpsum credit say at the end of a month which you can convert for a real purchase online or say a coupon. Will this be the next level of social interactions? One Click Monetization of our social life on the web? The number of 'likes' will decrease perhaps on the fear of we losing out our points but will the inhibitions and quandary be still there while supporting a cause strong enough for an adrenaline rush within.

The case of Flattr

I remember signing for Amazon , putting my credit card details and then carry on with whatever i want to purchase. Unlike the other online buying sites (say Makemytrip.com or irctc.in) , i need not give my card details after the first purchase; they pick the predefined address and card details. Now think of a restaurant with no price list. Its totally left to the discretion of the customers as to how much they want to pay - basically extending the tipping etiquette to a full swing. Now what if it happens for the loads of online contents - articles,  blog posts, videos et all. This is what Flattr tries to do - providing a quick one-click easy way of paying to online contents. 

The image shows what put them to popularity chart. After Visa, MasterCard and Paypal closed their channels, Flattr was one of the few remaining medium through which people could donate to wikileaks. You just need to create an account and start embedding within their blog the flattr button like the one below.

Anyone else having the flattr account can use this button to like and pay/donate.Flattr makes revenue by cutting 10% of the money made by the content provider as their fee.

Cultural Catch: In simple words, voluntary payments are still like the tip we pay in restaurants, an etiquette that has survived years to become a collective habit amongst the masses.But do micropayments site such as this one have this time to catch. By the time they will do, a Facebook or a Google is sure to catch on this trend.

Osama's Death reminded me of Freedom at Oracle

Let me start with the below line from my earlier post Infosys Loaded with its 3.0 Version - Part II

"I am not a regular television viewer (more due to living out of home since last 12 years) but i do consider myself just lucky enough to catch the historic ones - from IC 814 hijack to 911 to Obama's election to Egypt crisis to almost all the general elections in India post the famous riots at Bhagalpur. "

and extend it further. 

I am not a regular television viewer because i never had one during the last 12 years of my life plus the almost ubiquitous internet accessibility ensured that there was no need of it. But now after landing up in Bangalore in a 'furnished' accommodation with fixed monthly bucks to pay for it and with a television right in front of me, i subconsciously seem to be trying to make up for it. To the extent that its always on. Yes the first thing i tend do in morning is check my mobile and switch on the tv. The same happened on the Monday morning (on 2nd of May, 2011 to be precise). Having a usual incomplete sleep (just check when the angry bird blog was posted, the clueless act of grouping the objects on Prezi was the culprit ), i hurriedly left my place around 8:30 in the morning.

I reached office around 9:45, though the official hours start at 8. Now if you are an MBA graduate that too a fresh one that too from TAPMI (yes , time is still the religion there; you can be late for your date and still make up for it but not to a lecture there) and when your manager inadvertently (read always) arrives before you perhaps to check on your just-got-late excuse, it should be a crime. I will make up staying late, thought me but again if you are part of the Indian IT setup , that should be a norm. Nevertheless, i squeezed though my desk and started pretending to work perhaps like most other folks.With a printer behind and people gushing in there for their share of this facility , it was difficult to open my morning dose of Linkedin (yes that's the only social/professional networking site which the sensors allow here), The Social Canvas Daily (thanks paper.li for making access to the twitter-se-posted links so easy and that too without logging into twitter) and other sites to which i have almost got addicted to. Only around 11:30ish, i was able to browse through Time of India headline and headline it was - President Obama confirms death of Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

That was it. Series of googling and series of write-ups on how it all transpired - let them note if they want to - the rebel inside me declared. You can browse through n number of pages but catching it live on the box has its own element , if only there could be one around. The dear Oracle cafeteria was being missed. That Lehmann Brother collapse, the Mumbai 26/11 attack and the Tendulkar's century with India winning in Chennai a month after, the Satyam scam and the stock market crashing - i had watched them all in those cafeteria's TVs. And it was not me, a whole lot of their employees did - the good part was no one minded those so called loss of productive hours or questioned it in any way. Trust was the key (and still it is i am sure) at Oracle. Loved the freedom being provided. There was no concept of swipe-in and swipe-out for logging your attendance to office. You can come and go to office anytime. There is no dress code attached. No blocking of the social network sites. No one checking your bag while you leave the office.

Yes, when you have whole bunch of talented people , the best of IT land, you should consider them to be matured enough to prove their worth and give back the returns on the salaries they receive. And who don't want to be a liberal soul. The age cohort of Indian workforce says it all:

Generation Bharat (Born between 1960-1975) characterized by

• Collectism and conformity
• Strong family values
• Do not question authority
• Believe that higher education is the only way to success
• Deep-seated economic insecurity
• Lack of optimism
• Cynicism and lack of empowerment

Generation India (Born between 1975-1990)

• Characterized by high confidence
• Capacity to process information very fast
• Urge to develop a career fast
• Tendency to expect to be given high responsibilities immediately
• Individualism
• Impatient
• Bold
• Tendency to overestimate themselves (arrogance of ignorance)
• Tendency to expect employer to adapt to them
• Roaming in cynicism-optimism paradigm
• Living in duality

General Globalized India (Born after 1990)

• Characterized by awareness of the world
• Environment conscious
• High technology literate
• Multitasking ability
• Urge to grow up fast
• Disrespect for elders and authority
• Lack of proper role models and references
• High self-confidence
• Optimist by nature
• Sees plurality as a way of life

A U.S company seems to have understood this Indian cohort better than its Indian counterparts.

Angry Birds - Online & Offline Time Killer

Just tried my hands on Prezi. Check out how Angry Bird , the gesture-based simple game, has caught up with the current gaming wave , its monetization model , future and the challenges ahead.

PS: Flash should be enabled in your browser to see this presentation.

Infosys Loaded with its 3.0 Version - Part II

I am not a regular television viewer (more due to living out of home since last 12 years) but i do consider myself just lucky enough to catch the historic ones - from IC 814 hijack to 911 to Egypt crisis to Obama's election to almost all the general elections in India post the famous riots at Bhagalpur. But never saw a live corporate broadcast such as the Infosys' one yesterday. They have their own way of doing things. Everything scripted to picture perfect? Living up-to the transparent organization they are much touted as. 

Despite all the hoopla, the janitor example by Mr.KV Kamath was the most touching. It seems the first ICICI ATM was installed in the same Infosys campus from where the new leadership announcement was being made yesterday. One day Mr.Narayana Murthy asked one janitor standing in line of the ATM regarding what he thinks about the ATM. The janitor responded that he loves this machine because if he would have gone in the bank , the teller/cashier would give extra treatment/respect to the babus in the line , but the machine here treats everyone equally. This reflects the 'technology as a leveler' effect which the modern India is experiencing. This leveling on par behavior is being what is aimed when we speak about automating the NREGA process or the e-Choupal initiative by ITC or the introduction of UID - just reduce the manual touch points and get rid of the hierarchical society estranging  our India.

So here comes the first similarity between Mr.KV Kamath and Mr.Narayana Murthy - Both had brought social levelers in their own way/field. One by creating millions of employment/jobs (and honoring them all even in downturn) and the other by revolutionizing the banking sector in this country - both through technology usage and adoption. The other similarity comes from the nature of fields they come from - both IT business and financial industry have lots of similarity- ever changing and evolving fast with their own share of (cyclical) downs. Both these leaders are difficult shoes to fill in their respective spaces and now when one is putting on his feet on the other's, the movie should be worth watching.

Many see it as the toughest period for Infosys with the top management changes, founding members moving forward , their Global Delivery Model under test more than ever before and declining revenues amidst the transition. But forget that they started in the most unfriendly of the environment for doing business with limited resources and have now created an extraordinary setup of infrastructure and leadership.And the knack of Mr.Kamath to identify the next change/opportunity/trend will just add to it. The bigger challenge is motivating the team again after the recent media bashings holds the key for them

Where they lack is perhaps a little more aggression ; remember the Axon deal where they decline to re-bid on top of HCL's quote? They have done so many things first - listing on Nasdaq, consulting through GDM, center in China but in their quest of taking planned and thoughtful risk, they seem to be losing out. Perhaps the "'In data we believe and God we trust' philosophy needs a little tweaking. The declining gap with other Indian IT companies such as TCS is just a myth. One theory says that the gap is more because of they considering in their financial report the expiry of tax exemptions from the STP(Software Technology Park) scheme of the government of India leading to an increase in their effective tax rate which the other companies are yet to figure out like the government and NASSCOM itself. One point which media seems to be not pointing as of now is the dual leadership conundrum - At one point (merely 3 months ago) we saw Wipro breaking away from this model and now Infosys embracing it further by retaining the co-chairman space.

Perhaps a mix of continuity and fresh perspective was the call.

Click here for Part I