Automobiles...not light weighted

A serendipitous bump into statistics about Automobile industry took me by surprise. I did a little bit of surfing & digging to write this post.

To start with, a small comparison to understand how big Automobile Industry (US) is...

Top 10 Hollywood Movies in terms of collection so far are:
Titanic (1997)
Star Wars (1997)
Shrek 2 (2004)
E.T (1982)
Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999)
Spider-Man (2002)
Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge os the Sith (2005)
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
Spider-Man 2 (2004)
The Passion of Christ (2004)

The Total collection is $4,268,752,087.

Total sales revenue of one vehicle line (Ford F-Series) for one year (2004) in US was $28,185,330,000. [Sales of 939,511 units at an average sales price of $30,000]

Amazing, ain't it? Well, let us keep the comparison of profits aside.

In 2004, Total revenue from new vehicle sales in US is $270,000,000,000. This revenue is somewhere in between the GDPs of Columbia and Saudi Arabia in year 2004. They are ranked at positions 31 & 30 in terms of GDP that year.

As per year 2005 data, US is at number one in total number of cars & light commercial vehicles produced with 11,524,000 units. India is at 12th position with 1,406,000 units.

I never realized that US auto industry is this big. Now, I feel that I should have read Lee Iococca's autobiography, which is lying in my book shelf for a pretty long time. Another interesting fact is that new car sales revenue is going south in US in recent years whereas in India it is picking up for obvious reasons. I have always thought that in India, the sales revenue is more because of the first time car buyers. But that is not the fact. Major revenue comes from the buyers who buy their 2nd or 3rd car. Just one and a half years with my first car I have seriously started contemplating about my second car - UV type. Looks like this can be extrapolated to all car owners. The automotive market in India is going pretty steady, may be that is the reason why major to niche players in automobile sector are opening their shops in India. In a way I am happy that Chennai is becoming like what Detroit is for US. This may sound like a tall claim now, but the future is not too far.

Following is an excerpt from McKinsey's report:
In the span of a generation, India's automotive market has transformed a failing local industry into a thriving producer of reasonably priced, reliable small cars, some for export. Alongside the assemblers, successful component manufacturers and suppliers have developed. Still, while India's industry is booming, consumers, rather than investors, are reaping the greatest rewards. Read the rest from

http://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/publications/newhorizons/auto.asp if it sounds interesting.

The Threat, The Fear and The Panic

'The playing field is being levelled', the statement made by Mr.Nandan was the inspiration for Mr.Thomas L.Friedman to coin the title for his bestseller 'The World is Flat'.

A few weeks ago I went to Bangalore on an official trip. An advertisement board in Bangalore airport grabbed my attention and made me to stand, stare and shake my head. The ad-board has a golf field, Tiger Woods is walking up on a slope in the golf field and the ad-line goes 'There is no such thing as level playing field'.

Probably many would have guessed when I said the name, Tiger Woods. Yes, the advertisement is for the Consulting, Technology and Outsourcing giant, well, global giant, who provides end-to-end solutions to its customers, the one and only Accenture.

I know that Accenture India sucks. Probably Accenture has its shop in India just to show their customers that they have presence in Indian market, which is the most chanted name as the offshoring and oursourcing destination. But definitely Accenture-America is not a sucker. It is so obvious that Accenture sees Infosys as a threat, while Infosys is just a 2.5 billion dollar company originated from India and still in the warming up mode to provide end-to-end solutions to its customers & trying to become a business partner.

As an Indian I am so proud that a company originated from India makes a company like Accenture feel the fear and panic enough to release such an advertisement. I was wondering what would a CEO or CIO some corporate think when he sees such an ad? I felt that this ad is a definite image booster for Infosys.

Actually Accenture is not the first one in that panic list. I think IBM was the first one to (over)react its panic. IBM story goes three years back. In 'Wall Street Journel', (just to emphasize, there wouldn't be a single CEO in US who does not read Wall Street Journel) there was a full page (or a half page - not sure of the size - but that doesn't matter really) ad which goes something like this. 'We are better than any consultancy in Banking domain'.
Irony is in American dictionary you can not find the word 'consultancy'. It clearly shows that IBM felt that TCS was a threat to its business.

For IT solutions, India should become like what China is for manufacturing unless it would be too difficult to run this 'India Story' a few years from now. I believe that research is one important area where India Inc must concentrate more to accelerate the growth and enjoy the benefits of globalization. We can not survive so long just with the low-end jobs being outsourced.

The Code (that I liked most)

Long awaited movie version of 'The Da Vinci Code' is opening on 19-May worldwide. I am eagerly waiting to watch the movie. Even thinking of (re)reading the book before watching the movie. If just the readers of this novel watch the movie at least once, the movie will be a huge box office hit. This novel is not an easy one to make it as a movie. Fulfilling millions of readers' imaginations is a real challenge. Lets see how the movie has been filmed.

This is the first time ever that I am going to see a hollywood movie that's made out of a novel, which I had already read. Generally the readers who see the movie version of novels don't appreciate the movie much. Their usual comment is that the novel was better than the movie. I guess, somehow the movie versions fail to meet the readers' expectation or imagination. God Father is one great movie & still in number one of top 100 hollywood movies made so far. I know people who claim that the novel is much better than movie. One very common thing that I never heard of is movie version being better than the novel. If you know any such movie/novel do share it with me. I would love evaluate it myself.

Standing Tall

Just 'chumma' posted my picture. This was me a year ago...what a year can do to your body is amazing.
What a year did to my body
- Put on 8 kgs weight
- Waistline gone up by 3 inches
- Flesh on cheeks look always like I have bunch of chocolates in my mouth
- Lost good amount of hair

Depressing list...I am getting old...

When I was in my teens I used to like getting older. When I was in early 20's slowly that mentality changed. Now I almost want to stop the time or want to stop getting old. Among the 100 odd people on the floor of my work place I am definitely top 10 oldest people. I am worried that my sub-ordinates start calling me uncle, like I used to tease older people.

hmmm...MBA

A colleague-friend of mine introduced his fried, who was an ISB aspirant a few years back but did not get a chance to sit on the 'hot seat' of ISB. He is working for BNP Paribas, an European bank now.

I always have a thing for MBAs and MBA aspirants. When a person says that he is thinking of pursuing an MBA or he is an MBA, my eyes go wide and balls (eyes') come a little out to watch them keenly. I observe their style, the way they present themselves, the way they talk about them & others etc. Not that I am on an evaluation kind of mode; just that I am trying to learn something. This guy I was talking about in the first two lines was an interesting person. He shared why he couldn't get through. Learning from failures is a good thing; learning from other's failures is a wise thing. So I had to probe a little to make him talk about his failure. Lets not get into all what he said for now.

According to him, one must prepare for MBA interviews like a girl prepares for a beauty contest. Virtual or real the way you answer the interviewer should be spontaneous, wearing a smile on your face and showing a good gesture. I have not watched many beauty contests but his statement reminded me of the movie Miss Congeniality. And I was able to correlate. The punch line "World Peace" is unforgettable. And the way Sandra Bullock says that on beauty pageant was sweet. (I am not a big fan of Sandra though).

I see two kinds of people a lot around me. One, who wants to pursue MBA; two, who wanted to puruse MBA. I definitely fall under one of these two categories.

What an MBA teaches people? It teaches you how to think. (I read this line sometime somewhere)

A-Rush

Today is a significant day in my life.

I have kicked off 3 new projects today with a team sized 24, my highest ever.

24 is a mix of people from 0 to 6 yrs of experience, with 0 being the major part of the pie.Above this, I am supposed to run the show with 75% of staffing. hmmm.....that's interesting.

This is going to be one of the most challenging assignments that I have undertaken.

Whenever I start off with doing something 'big' or 'new' or 'tough' or 'many-eyes-watching-it' kinda work, I would feel an
adrenaline rush in me.

Speaking of adrenaline rush, the first time I felt the A-Rush quite frequently was when I was doing my first year under grad.
That's a very nice, pleasant & embarrassing feeling to recall now. Like all normal adolescent boys in college, I also liked talking to girls. Poor me, never had experience in interacting with girls much in my school days. I used(!) to be very shy and self-conscious about talking to a girl, I think a lot about what she would think about me, if I talked to her. I used to rehearse a few times myeslf before spitting the words out. Even then I would stammer a lot. Ad-libbing? Definitely not my cup of tea. The time I start rehearsing to the time I complete with spitting it out is the A-Rush period. I am a dead meat, when it comes to conversing with girls in english. Double the rehearsals, double the stammering, double the A-Rush. But the things changed over the course of time. Remarkable improvement during the four years of my collegehood. By the time I was at my final year, I was really an expert(!) and even did pass my wisdom on to poor souls who were like me just a few years back. No more A-Rush while talking to girls. (Bad, eh?)

Do I have this adrenaline rush with my newly started assignments? Absolutely NO.
Probably this is like that 'talking-to-girls' thing. Over the course of time A-Rush got reduced and gone down to zero.

Last time I had a grrrrreat adrenaline rush was when I was standing 160 metre high on a pad just seconds before bungy jumping.
That was awesome

A sign to Despair

I read an interesting article about competency in IT industries. The point that it stresses upon is Knowledge Management (for self).
In every six months of time if your resume doesn't get added with new skills that's the sign to despair. That's a very valid point.

In 'The Economic Times' recently there was an ad, which grabbed my attention and I cut that ad and pasted it in my kiosk at work. Ad is...a big picture with a small caption under it. The big picture has 4 lions drigoing water out of a small pond with a small dog in the middle of them. The caption says 'If you think, you can'. It's an ad for 'The Economic Times' (it also says 'The Power of Knowledge' under it's name).

I actually started reading ET everyday for about 5 months now and a month ago added 'Business Line' with it. They are quite interesting dailies than 'The Hindu', which I thought as waste of money.

A few days back I was conversing with an upper management guy (who is three level above me) at my work and I was easily able to converse with him about someother corporate's results and the numbers. It was a good 15 mins conversation and I was so eloquent while our conversation touched different areas. hmm....'The Power of Knowledge'.

Yeah, about that ad pasted in my kiosk, a couple of days after pasting it one of my colleagues stopped by and asked me 'do you like lion? is that why you have pasted that ad?'. I wanted to tell him to go to hell. But didn't.

I am Back (with a bang)

I am back after a good 4 months break from Blogging.

Most of the time my job took all my time & space, so couldn't blog. Quite frequently I think or come across with something worth blogging. I really missed blogging much.

Blogging is like a whole new world.

How have I been in this period? Pretty good with lots of happenings.

I have resolved myself to blog at least once a week. Let me see how good am I in keeping the resolution.

I will be back...

Steno-Rita

Technological innovations help humans improve their productivity. (That’s so obvious, I know. I thought that’s the better way to start this blog). Lately I dreamt of some technological innovations that would aid me to improve my productivity. And my firm belief is that these innovations would definitely help many persons’ lives happy & easy. Well, I admit that they are just ‘nice-to-have’ ones. One such is here and the rest will follow:

Executives and senior management persons would require reading & responding a hundred to thousand mails everyday. Some, who can afford, has personal assistants and stenographers to help them to get this done fast. But many are struggling, slogging and juggling themselves. Whereas they could spend their valuable time in other more productive activities. Steno-Rita, the ultimate software, is dedicated to such people.

Commercial for Steno-Rita goes something like this:
Are you still in the bed, are you eating breakfast, are you travelling long hours to/fro work doesn’t matter where you are. Just call the number assigned to you. Sharp & sweet voice of Steno-Rita will read you the mails in your inbox and takes appropriate actions immediately. Want to reply? Just speak out what do you want send as reply. Steno-Rita converts your voice to letters and drafts the reply and reads back to you for you to proof-read. Literally whatever a steno can do, Steno-Rita can do. Or should I say, whatever a steno is supposed to do, Steno-Rita can do?
Just think of the amount of time you save and the productivity improvement.
Oh yeah, you don’t have to pay compensation every month and don’t have to provide healthcare for this Steno-Rita.

Should I patent Steno-Rita before anyone plagiarizes my idea?

O’ Five….

Year O’ Five has been eventful, remarkable, wonderful and very special in my life. It definitely needs a recap of why this year has been so special.

• Bought my first car in India and christened it "Jenny"...
• Tried GMAT for 2nd time and realized that it was not my cup of tea...
• Got engaged...
• Got Married...yippie...that a reason to call it a spl year...
• Started Blogging...
• Quit my old job, which I loved for 6 years...
• Joined my current job, which I am loving now...
• Migrated to a new city for job & to set up family...
• Read a lot of books than ever, in a wide variety of genres (20 plus)...
• Interviewed people for job recruitments for first time...(both at old & current jobs)
• Went to UK on business - my shortest overseas trip ever (2 days/3 nights)..
• Air Travelled 16 times (11 - personal & 5 - business) (this is my highest ever in a single year)...
• Visited the following places...

Thirunelveli
Thiruchendur
Delhi
Agra
Kullu-Manali
Vellore
Ooty
Edinburgh - Scotland

Hope to have an eventful O'Six.