The Bold and The Blind

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Confederation of Indian Industry conducts useful meetings. As such, it is a very large organization that advocates on policy issues and has a significant influence on how the industry is shaping up. One of the meetings they have conducted, I attended, was the investors meet on 22nd February, 2012. The agenda was to bring the investors and borrowers together to see if there can be a match making exercise (as Dr. Harish Patnaik put it).

As an assistant professor my interest in attending the meeting was only too academic. To the most part of the day, it was what was expected: the cry of the small business owners that banks and other investors don’t support them as much as they should. But when Mr. Ramesh Kumar (CII MSME Committee) took over, the picture started changing to a more balanced perspective. With a panel that represented banks, nonbanking financial corporations, venture capitalists, angel investors, private equity consultants and other governmental bodies who raise funds, he tried placing a few points in the heads of the borrowers (fund seekers). I found reasons why it was important.

Four presentations caught my attention for four different reasons:

  1. Presentation One: The fund seeker was in the business of training different IT Courses, and had a revenue of INR 18 Lacs, with an annual profit of INR 1.5 Lacs. His fund request was about INR 1 Crore that was supplemented with what he alleges to be a business plan (an excel sheet that shows how he can pay back). The venture capitalist on stage had just one question to this proposal! “Can you give it all to me in one page stating why you think you will be successful?“. The answers to that were lame; I thought it was waste of time.
  2. Presentation Two: The man who presented looked firm, confident and explained their business, dairy. The annual turnover was at INR 64 Crore, and they were seeking another INR 30 Crore to expand their business. Again, the question was same from the panel of investors. Only this time, the man gave an answer that was as firm as he looked. He said, “We are the one of the first players in the business. Our growth projections are reasonable. We offer an exciting exit plan for the investors“. It was sufficient to create a discussion among the panel. Just as I thought this man would get the fund he sought, he murmured during lunch with me that their business may be expanded even without this funding assistance, and that he found alternative ways to do it. Amazed I am with his confidence, and more with his preparation!
  3. Presentation Three: The man looked professional in his approach. And before I saw him on stage, I found him networking actively. He probably won half the game there! When he was done presenting his set of slides, he convinced the panel that it was a business in which he faces no competition, and that there is a high entry barrier. What I am surprised is the ease with which he could drive his point through! I think he got a cheque before he left the meet. By the way, he was selling fish.
  4. Presentation Four: The man was an experienced engineer, looked like a bureaucrat too. His idea was genuine, offers exceptional operational gains, though I must say it is not a ground-breaking innovation. His presentation did not really seek funds, but sought assistance on identifying the prospective investors (wonder if he thought there was a difference, at least on this stage!). That he was a technical man (if that makes sense), and not a finance man (excuse me again) was his point that prompted him to make that kind of a request. I pity his understanding of the meet, but can’t resist admiring his ideas and the magnitude of gains that he showed are possible. Indian railways has a lesson to learn from him, and they can save upto INR 600 Crore at least every year.

It was all business upto this point. There were seekers meeting the investors; some got washed away in questions, and some ended discussing. But here comes another man, an alumni of IIM, white haired and with wrinkles on his face, to talk about executive coaching and how it can help the businessmen to get the best out of themselves. I appreciate his points, but on the forum I must admit, it looked out of place. When it was business all through, talk of coaching seemed like a rat trying to find a piece of cheese in a prince’s ball.

Another CII Meet today, this time on Doing business with UK, at Green Park, Vizag. Let me see if I find something better here…

Meeting malady

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A call at 10:40 AM on a well-planned day called me in for a meeting at 11:30 AM that is chaired by the top person of my organization. And that made things pretty sure that the plan was getting killed beyond lunch! Problem with planning is we need information to do it. On some occasions like this, there is only one plan that comes even in absence of real information (there is meta message always, a few physicists could argue, like say “It is a meeting with the boss, idiot“). The call hadn’t made the agenda of the meeting clear, so all I could go in was with a set of vague ideas about what it could be and how I can respond to situations if there are any to be observed.

11:50 PM it is before everyone comes in, and waits for the boss to join. Chatter begins and speculation ends as the agenda of the meeting is about deciding (did we have a choice?) to spend a couple of lacs on purchasing a shallow idea that adds a delta benefit if all goes well; perhaps it is that delta which comes freely if really all goes well. The guest from GHOST, an organization that has a fortune 500 client base with an overall client base of 20000 plus organizations, is given the opportunity to present his proposal. And he took off!

The idea is…we give you…you would get…there are benefits…we brand…provide visibility…many others have bought…we are the best…

What is funny in all this is that GHOST did not have a product they owned. What they came in is with a service they were piloting on us (oops, did I bluntly spell it out?). And the wise men chairing the meeting asked a valid question!

Is there a commitment?

The response to that from representative of GHOST was heard as,

I respect…I truly agree… you are right…I appreciate…you should be critical…company doesn’t allow us to commit, but… we deliver…

I understand, like all others in that meeting, that GHOST has proved that it is a leader in its line of busyness. What I did not know till then was that bargaining and business meeting is still the same, no matter whether the organization is a GHOST or a GORILLA or for that matter even a GOAT. I see that almost all business meetings have same type of language used; curse my work on communication if you are a marketer or a business developer. So discussing, the representative from GHOST suddenly jumped out of conversation claiming that he had a flight to catch–after all, playing big is one trick of selling dodos.

And then, there was an open forum for members to share their views on what can be concluded. I recall Bernard Shaw saying, God is a comedian who performs to an audience too afraid to laugh. There were views all lined up in support (or sucked into the shallowness) of GHOST’s proposal. I played fool to not be the one with an eye. And so the meeting concluded at 13:10 PM!

Just as I want to say Thank God for giving such fun and opportunity to learn, here comes another call for a meeting. What awaits thee now!?

Little funny things

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Has there ever been a moment when you felt embarrassed? Are you shy of admitting it? I am yet to research the reactions of people when one admits those little funny moments when one was embarrassed, but I like to keep a record of them, so that I can look back and laugh at myself in leisure. Here we go with incidents from yesterday and upto now today:

Early Morning, Today:

“Sir, Wake up. We are at the college” were the words I had to hear from a student who himself was feeling uncomfortable to disturb me from my deep sleep in the college bus. I hope I did not snore.

Late Evening, Yesterday:

“I can suggest you exercises to get rid of cramps. All you have to do is stretch like this..” and as I was demonstrating, I fell victim to those untimely cramps. With who and where did it happen? It happened when I was talking with my wife, and we were amidst all my family members. Lucky thing, I had my dad attend to me immediately!

Afternoon, Yesterday — Business meeting:

Him: What do you do at MVGR?

Me: I teach.

Him: May I know what you teach?

Me: Statistics, Operations Research, Research Methodology

Him: ….. (confused look, because I was talking “finance” in the meeting)

Me: I teach any math based subject. :)

…a minute later, we were discussing the cost details of the training they might be able to provide to our students, and…

Me: Can you give me the basis of costing  your training program?

Him: It is on a per hour basis; we pay the trainers about INR 1500 per hour.

Me: How many hours do you think the training would stretch to?

Him: We suggest a 30-hour program.

Me: So, approximately we are talking INR 4.5 Lacs, correct?

Him: ….. (confused again..), at that price, I can deploy the original software in your entire college, Sir!?

Me: *&!?$@#

Eventful

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Ventured into writing for money, and that has mixed results for me to fully ignore writing anymore for money sake. Perhaps, like in one case, money should come inviting me to write. 

Satan Secretary has given a brief glimpse that she might be on a different route, but inadvertently she keeps coming back to her bad habits–a mark of satan. Again, I think ignorance would be my answer for one more semester.

Job has been exciting. Changes were made to my role, of which some I desired and some I dreaded. Part of the new role was getting jobs for students. I recently figured out that professionalism needs no neighbor, for someone showed me that jobs can be bought in deals for drools. It makes worthwhile presenting business in a suit and just case.

What I thought was an opportunity seems to catch up with the frog in the brew. I once tasted mediocrity, and I think I should add a little spine to change the taste of the brew that is getting ready in the next few months. I guess language that is shallow yet sweet is a reasonable solution. Why won’t you support this?

Can’t accurately figure out the reason why, but technological independence makes me feel having more time to critique. If it is good, I began critiquing myself. If it is bad, give me lucrative jobs.

Like every January that brings a new year, it brings to me destabilizing news, either happy or not. This January, I lost my lappy, bought a kindle fire; lost a relative, my friend is getting married; bought jobs for my students, struck a deal with a start up firm; wrote for money and gained, wanted more of it and lost. All in all, the month was eventful.

Lot in store for the next month, and there are targets I am chasing.

On Financial Education

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I invested in the share market.

It is a kind of courageous statement for someone who had a painful answer to a rather curious question: how can I be rich? The lessons from my stock market investments have been too costly for me to venture getting the complete answer. But over time, I have learnt that investing is not necessarily the best way to learn the trade. There are other sources too! And frankly, in the kind of financial complexity that we live in, I think one needs to be aware of various investment opportunities and how they might fare well before putting in their money. Thanks to the recent developments I went through; my boss, the head of the department has recently been trained by SEBI, India to deliver such awareness sessions, and he had done one of his first few sessions in our college itself. I would not call it a complete guide to financial investing, however, it at least sets up a platform from where I can plan further.

Recalling, there were times I said, I will never again invest in stock market. Perhaps it is time for me to revisit that line and see if it is worth sticking in my head. At the moment, I just wish as I am about to experiment again, that the financial systems offered to its consumers, a way out of complexity through straight talk.

______

Here is one website I have recently stumbled on, Loans.net. On the face of it, it was hard for me to identify what this was all about. But soon figured out that this was one system that integrates financial instruments for various organisations and offers the one that best fits the customers’ need. It also has lots of content that talks about different kinds of loans. Perhaps, this is one kind of place where I want to begin–draw money, and then invest. ;)

Semester Moments Assorted

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Phew! As I solve the eleventh hour queries of students troubled with what is gobbled up through the course of a semester, I found few challenging ones that observed my attention. Curse or thank the mediocrity of those instant guides that are popularly used every examination season; I have learnt a point or two more within my subject, not because they had better lessons, but they had problems confounded in such manner that they forced me to explore more. So, here we go with the three questions:

Question One: Why do we select the point of intersection that is closest to the horizontal axis when we solve games using graphical method?

Question Two: In a transportation problem, why do we form a circuit when we want to identify how much the allocation should be modified and where?

Question Three: If we talk of Six sigma, is it really about accommodating six standard deviations in the process or should it be about reducing the absolute standard deviation?

Goodness me, there is some talent out there.

That is not all I had this semester. There were a couple of embarrassing moments that is attributed to the efforts to try and over teach (not so desirable) and to the efforts of trying to explain the fundamentals more than required (no so needed, I find now). The first moment, I missed computing the standard deviation and got the problem wrong, and it took me a second after stepping out of the class to identify what mistake I committed. But the twenty minutes I struggled in the class remains an experience. On the second moment, I explained game theory very convincingly through out only spoiling one last procedure. I had forgotten substituting calculated values in the original equations to find out the whole range of values required.

If you think these were silly, I am assuming (actually I shouldn’t hope) the students caught more than what I had known myself committing in lectures.

If I were to mention one significant learning from this semester of teaching, I would say it, but it would not be ground-breaking. I figured out that supplying material to students prior to the class is as effective as supplying no material. The later can at least save me some time and energy.

What would I be doing next semester? I am eagerly planning things.