If you are following US Business news you would have read about Starbucks closing over 600 of their stores around USA. I am wondering on what took them so long to do it.

For instance every time I visit Seattle (their headquarters) I am puzzled on how come Starbucks have nearly half-a-dozen stores in the downtown area around WA State convention Center. Aand all of them in walking distance to one another. In one of the streets for every block they have a Starbucks store. Naturally each of their store will eat into their other stores - if it is carpet bombing strategy against competition, I don't find it impressive.

Here is the full list of stores that they are closing.

Recently I received a report on the vision of Tamilnadu Government for how the business climate should be in year 2025 in the state. The report was a joint work by CII (Confederation of Indian Industries) and Tamilnadu Government (TN Gov). 

I saw one interesting statistics that stood out among the report's many pages. It was the number of days it takes to start a business in Tamilnadu (to a large extend it is same across India) - it is currently a whooping "41" days. I was not surprised, since I run my own business for last 10 years and have been through these hurdles of bureaucracy many times.

Most recently I had to do this (starting a business) once more, this time for my family business and it took me nearly 5 to 6 weeks. At this time we still we have VAT registration pending. To be fair, few days out of this was due to my end delays as well.

1. We started with registering the new "Private Limited" (Limited Liability Company)  with Registrar of Companies (RoC). For this the first step is to get name clearance (name of the company shouldn't be conflicting with the said/unsaid guidelines or with other existing businesses). This took some time.
2. Then comes the actual registration which involved multiple iterations of submission of our MoA and AoA (Memorandum of Articles and Article of Association). Each time we had to take a print, sign the paper, scan it, then digitally sign it and then upload it as a PDF file to the site. Once approved, you need to follow this by a hard-copy submission(sometimes they may ask for the hard-copy for each iteration as well) of the documents.  Once this is done.
3. First board meeting and resolutions to be passed
4. Followed by getting an Income Tax PAN Number
5. Then comes opening of a Bank Account
6. Then comes applying for Service Tax Number or TIN (Tamilnadu VAT Number) and CST (Central Sales Tax). The choice between Service Tax and Sales Tax registration is depending on the nature of your business.

After all this only you can start your functioning. There will be more steps if you are involved in manufacturing, which depending on the industry has various other registration formalities. Compare all this is the time it took to open a business in USA - we opened our 100% subsidiary sitting from India in less than few days through the help of a CPA locally in India - everything happened through online. I remember reading that New Zealand, Canada and Australia with USA tops for the shortest days required to open a business. For information on doing businesses around the world, see this world bank funded site.

With the above experience I should say it is definitely commendable of Tamilnadu Government to even dream a "2" day timescale for this by 2025.

According to Taxman in India, from 1st June 2008 (after this year Union Budget was passed) a licensed software like Adobe Photoshop or Microsoft Office is both a Service and a Product. While world over taxes are being simplified, streamlined and modernized keeping pace to technology - in India our Finance Ministry has proven its fondness for complicating existing laws and getting into legal word tangles. This is in spite of record tax collections in the last few years, this year TDS (with holding tax) collection were up by a whopping 60% from last year. 

While change of classification of software may seem insignificant it has real impact on the tax that a consumer/business is charged while buying a software package. Earlier all Packaged Software/License were treated as a sale of product and charged VAT @ 4% to 12% (varied by state). Now all software are treated as a services as well. It is not reclassified from Product to Service but classified to be both - strange is India's tax laws!. The industry is suffering for the last few weeks with all major dealers and distributors waiting for some clarity from government as this change will result in a tax of 24% on licensed (legal) software, which is absurd. In India Service Tax is Central (Federal) subject, VAT is State subject - so both don't want to clarify this situation.

This week I couldn't buy a software that I needed because of this issue. My regular dealer refused to give me a quotation for few products that I wanted because of this legal mess. He said in his 25 years of being in the business this is the first time he has stopped billing for over 3 weeks. What is even more strange is that none of the software industry bodies are vocally raising this issue to the government - may be they feel the government has no ears to serious issues like these, they are busy listening to the daily threats from the left parties

After much deliberation and delay, Govt. Of India has increased the retail fuel prices - Rs.5 for Petrol, Rs.3 for Diesel and Rs.50 for Household LPG. Though delayed for long we need to praise the Prime Minister for finally biting the bullet - especially with all the political compulsions of coalition politics he has and for getting the powerful finance ministry to agree for deep tax and duty cuts.

On the other side, I am wondering why Government has to be involved in fixing the price of retail fuel. Other than Household LPG, the fuel price should be left to free market. Just like anything else the fuel price has to be determined purely on demand and supply economics. With Oil prices at record levels of $135 from levels of $30 before 4 years, retail price have to naturally increase. You cannot make Oil Marketing companies loss over Rs.200,000 Crores and make the common shareholders in those companies suffer (Disclaimer: As on date I have no investments in ONGC, IOC, BPCL or HPCL). It doesn't make any sense to buy oil at ever increasing prices and keep selling it at loss, eventually sinking the Oil companies. Leaving it without a price increase the loss would have been ultimately burdened on the miniscule compliant Tax payers in India. Somehow political parties in India are of opinion that increase in taxes affects only the rich and any burden on them is allowed - if you keep doing that, there will be no investments by companies and eventually no new jobs.

There is other side to the need to increase the prices and that is Environment. India is consuming Oil at historic levels that definitely has significant green house effects. The logical answer according to me is to increase the fuel price even more so that people feel the pinch and start reducing their consumption; and government can use the increased income to build on war footing world-class mass transport facilities in all cities.

Small and Medium Sized IT Companies (including Vishwak) in India have been enjoying Government of India Tax break under 10A scheme (managed by STPI) where by for their investments on new plant and machineries they get a 10 year Income Tax holiday. Few years back the government set the sunset for the tax break as 31st March 2009. The idea was to encourage movement in to the new China like SEZ (Special Economic Zones) where by more investments and job creations will be done. Unfortunately the SEZ Promoters are only selling spaces in them to large IT companies - the minimum you can buy is 100,000 sq. feet which is way above for any SME to afford. So this was perceived by many industry bodies as an anti-SME move. On top of this, in the last 12-18 months Rupee has been appreciating against the US Dollars by over 10-12% literally wiping off the margins for SMEs. Lastly the Finance Minister in his last budget imposed a 10% (approx) MAT (Minimum Alternate Tax) as well. So the industry was looking forward for the FM to extend some support in the budget but he didn't do it. But on the request of the IT Ministry and PM Office, the FM has yesterday announced for the extension of the STPI (Software Technology Parks of India) scheme for another 1 year till 31st March 2009. This certainly is a welcome move and I thank the Government for the same.

Now it is the turn of the industry to use the extension time to become self sustained by increasing productivity and introducing innovation, they should stop looking for perennial tax breaks.

One of the concerns for everyone in the Indian IT Industry - for both the insiders and the (abroad) customers are the rising cost of man power. In the last 3 to 4 years (Indian Financial Years Apr-Mar) the industry has grown tremendously. All the 3 Indian IT majors have joined the billion dollar club, continued to double there revenue every year and are now multi-billion corporations. All of them are close to having over 100,000 employees. They have been joined closely by Tier 2 IT companies as well in the multi-billion dollar club and many of them have over 50,000 employees with them. This is formidable human resource capital but they don't come cheap, this unprecedented growth has been pushing the salary further to unsustainable levels.

Further more, for Indian IT services firms nearly 50% (it ranges from 40%-60% depending on the size and offshore/onshore mix) of their revenue is spent in salary and related expenses. Only in few other industries, a single raw material* costs nearly 50% of the revenue. Certainly no other industry (may be Oil and Steel in recent years) have seen its raw materials* cost increase over 30% year on year. So far the Industry have been able to cope with this in several ways - productivity gains, fresh resource augmentations, training, process/tool improvements and more but this certainly gives sleepless nights to CEOs including myself. I strongly believe whether it is stock market, economy in general or salaries, all of them cannot defy gravity for long and keep growing upwards. Indian Stock market which sky rocketed with its BSE Sensex hitting 21,000+ few months back is now trading at 15,000 levels. All goes through cycles of ups and downs; bearish days are also good for the economy in the long run. In Australia conservationist welcome forest fires because they burn the outer layers of the trees which fall down and add nutrients to the soil. In the long run this helps the soil to remain fertile and nurture new life. This is nothing new, it has been happening this way there for millions of years.

Am I forecasting doom days here? - Certainly No. Tough days - Definitely Yes. There are several indicators for this trend. First is the obvious US Slowdown (and a short recession), second is the Indian Rupee to Dollar appreciation, Third is the increasing cost of raw materials and the lower margins - gone are the days of hefty profit margins in IT industry. All these have started to show their impact - news are trickling in of delayed joining dates for campus hires by the IT Majors (at this time this sounds more as rumours to me) and if slowing down in the rate of lateral hires/job market. The best indication I follow for sensing Chennai's Job market is "The Hindu" newspapers Wednesday Opportunities supplement - this week I hardly saw 1 or 2 IT related openings. Normally you see here several full page and half-a-page advertisements by all popular IT brands.

What are the consequences of this:

• First, it will separate boys from men (girls from ladies). The "me too" players will get killed and consolidation will happen in the industry, which is good for any industry to mature
• For the 3 Indian Majors this will mean little, it is likely to be business as usual. The senior teams there would have easily seen this coming for several quarters and they certainly had time to fine tune there strategies
• It will be difficult for Tier 2 companies who are aspiring to get into the elite league as their growth rates will slow down
• For small and emerging companies tough days are certainly ahead. There will be churn but the blood-bath may be limited and short
• Niche players depending on their offerings and geographies have better chances of surviving this and also growing a little due to easier talent access and lesser competition.<Shameless plug begin> This includes companies like mine "Vishwak". We are focused on Media Industry and have been investing heavily on the Indian domestic market for last few years. We are witnessing good growth on both these areas and our investments in Indian market are starting to paying off . Here first mover advantage give us significant head start along with our better understanding of the market<end>

I know this can start a lively debate here and I welcome it, please start posting your comments, observations and thoughts.

*I prefer calling them as Human Assets but that will give a different financial meaning in this context, so let us have them as raw materials here

There was a news item today that India has decided to adopt a new accounting system (IRFS) by 2011. IRFS is presently adopted by over 109 countries including China. I was curious on this move, found two references on the Internet to understand this.

1) Accounting in a global world

2) Debits & Credits of IFRS

This is what I understood: Just like how Technology standards and Protocols are vital for the Interconnected world of Internet to work together, it is equally important in globalized world today to have a common way to report financial's of companies around the world. Without such a standard it brings in huge disparity in disclosure thus creating loopholes to hide facts. All of this affects investor confidence and long term sustenance of the global economy. In short, it is a welcome move provided our government enacts all necessary law framework without delay.

In my earlier post I have given my guess list. My list was correct by more than 3/4th.

What happened from my list:

• FM had done nothing for Dollar hit export industry including IT
• Increase in Defence spending
• Dividend tax was tweaked
• Income tax exemptions increased by good percentages
• 6th Pay commission was accepted
• Farm credits /benefits were announced

What didn't happen from my list:

• Service tax rates were not changed (Good)
• A new committee for simplification didn't happen (Good, we have had enough committees)

The points I liked about the budget:

• Promised allocation for Minimum Work / Employment schemes
• Pushing the states for more accountability on central funded projects
• Drinking water availability in all villages and in all schools in India
• Allocation of over Rs.200 Crores for Chennai's Desalination plant
• Service tax for Customized Software (though I don't like the tax, it at least put an end to all arbitration on whether it is applicable or not)
• No change in corporate tax rate (Good)

Like his previous 4 budgets Mr.P.Chidambaram has taken this year too considerable efforts in listening to the public & Industry on their wish list for India Budget 2008. Like previous years this year too he will stop with listening and the budget will be a political compulsion/election oriented one. Following are my guesses on what he will do tomorrow:

• Some marginal concessions for Rupee/Dollar Hit export industry will be announced, only for the worst affected like Textile, Leather & accessories
• The biggest wish of the IT Industry, the extension of STPI scheme beyond 2009 will not be done. If mentioned, it will just say the decision is being left to the next government
• The duties and customs will be brought down and aligned with commitments given by the government to ASEAN and other trade pacts
• Income Tax rates will be left untouched. The minimum income level will be increased, some more exemptions for senior citizens & women will be given
• He will certainly promise setting up a new committee to simplify direct/indirect taxes to take advantage of the buoyant collections this year
• Service Tax will be increased by 2% (or) Educational Surcharge will be increased by additional 1% and it will be promised for further infrastructure/power developments/oil under recovery
• Implementation of 6th Pay commission which might give over 25% hike to government employees salaries and benefits. Possibly removal of new hiring restrictions in selective departments
• Increase the budget allocation for Defence especially the Nuclear & Missile programmes
• New farm oriented credit announcements will be made
• Dividend tax will be tweaked a bit to appease the stock market

I don't know whether any other country in the world (just kidding, it is not as if I am an expert on Budgets around the world just felt good saying it) has its budget strewn in such mystery and secrecy like the Indian Budget. In today's Globalized world the role of a central budget has diminished over the years which certainly is good. In my view a Central (a.k.a. Federal for those of you who are from USA) Budget should be more of a report card recording the performance of the government spend in the last 12 months and the outlook for next 12 months. The way Indian Budget has become over the years and is expected to function by common people, as the platform for all ministries and the entire governments policy announcements. This has made the Finance Ministry the nodal point and hence the single biggest bottleneck of every government departments functions. If you ask what is the alternative, it is to let each ministry on a regular basis announce its plan for next 12 months after consultation with respective industry bodies. This can be much like the way the commerce ministry does its EXIM policy but with more teeth and power to each ministry to do its job better than what it is today.

Anyway coming back to the topic, I read this good pictorial workflow of how the Indian Budget process happens in LiveMint. It has some surprises like the key people in budget preparation are locked in the basement of North Block for the last 7 days and the only people allowed to see from outside world is the Finance Minister!. Good Read.

Every Indian Engineer was made to feel proud yesterday. The event was unveiling of Tata Motors dream project the world's first Rs.1 Lakh (USD 2500) car - Tata Nano. When first talked about 4 years by Mr.Ratan Tata noone believed it to be possible that too by an Indian company. Thanks to the ingenuity and hard work of Indian Engineers it was made possible and demonstrated yesterday. From being an under-dog in the world's automobile scene, India overnight has graduated itself to the premium club of the GMs & Toyotas. With this Tata's have made themselves more than qualified to be the future owners of Jaquar & Land Rover.

I found it heartening to see the congratulatory message from Anand Mahindra, managing director for Mahindra & Mahindra, Tata Motors’ primary competitor “I think it’s a moment of history and I’m delighted an Indian company is leading the way”

It was exciting to see the Indian economy growing closer to becoming a mature economy. My random thoughts below on the subject as a novice.

You should give credit to the brothers (Mukesh and Anil) because in the last 2 years after their split-up it is amazing the amount of wealth they have created for themselves and their shareholders. The overall market capitalization of Reliance Industries and ADAG after the split-up is multiple times of the value when they were as one single unit. So it is not surprising if you are wondering like me whether the whole story of differences between the brothers and the split-up episode was orchestrated. Anyway it is, the split-up seems to be only for the good and has made all the stakeholders more wealthier and happier.

Today Reliance Power announced their IPO which they are claiming on TV to be India's largest public offering. The IPO opens on January 15 and closes on January 18 in the price band of Rs.405-450/share. They have announced incentive for individual investors by the flexibility to pay say Rs.110 or so while applying and the balance within 21 days from the date of allotment and a 5% discount. You can read the full news here.

Being in the IT Industry you can feel the energy of growth, innovation and excitement that's in India now. You can relate the present scene to the one that was there a decade back when IT professionals were rushing to United States and India suffered a brain drain (as it used to be called). Now the scene is completely the reverse where you are seeing many of those professionals returning back to India. They have had time to enjoy the western lifestyle, save some money and return back to India which was unheard of few years back. I personally know few of my friends at least who have returned from their high-paying/senior profile jobs in companies like Siebel, Microsoft, etc. in the last few years to India. In this connection I saw this Video in Hindustantimes that quantifies this to be about 60,000 Indian IT professionals who have moved back to India in last few years.

Moreover, nowadays people in the mid to senior roles don't want to leave their family behind and want to go to USA - they are getting salaries in India itself that are attractive and comparable.

This is sensational at the same time scary. As the saying goes "the higher you go, the harder the fall ". India's Stock market index today closed just 150 points short of the 19,000 mark. This is happened within few days of it crossing 18,000 and few weeks after crossing 17,000 mark. Though the fundamentals of the Indian Economy now is doing good, I am not sure it can handle so much money coming in so fast. Now any bad news that can affect the sentiment of the investors either internally like fall of this government or externally, will likely to trigger a huge fall. Such a fall can wipe out few hundred thousand millions in days and push into a burst. This scene is not very different in other Asian markets, everywhere fund is pouring.

On top this, Rupee is appreciating day by day. From Rs.44 a year back it has reached Rs.39.5 and is heading quickly to Rs.38. This is making Indian Products (whether it is Leather, Garment, ITES and to lesser extend Software) unviable in abroad markets. And Central government is merrily encouraging the rise, as it helps them to buy oil with lesser rupee. We can't also blame the government has their Left coalition partner are giving them no room to increase the Petrol Prices, inspite of oil is at an all time high of $85 per barrel.

One thing is certain - for everyone in business and money markets, challenging times are ahead soon.

June 2007 issue of IEEE Spectrum carried a comprehensive report on growth of Megacities. It talked about the pollution levels being highest in Karachi (Pakistan) followed by shamefully New Delhi (India), world urban population to constitute 60% of world population by 2030. London - New York has the highest international Internet Connection at around 387Gb/s.

The report also talks about Sao Paulo's complex bus system, building a green city in China, Unseen City below New York in the Subways, Earthquake warnings in Japan & Tata Power in Mumbai.

I realized so much we don't know about our cities.

This post is more of my thinking than a finite point on the present world economic achievements.

If you stop and think about what has been achieved in the last 10-15 years in Economy and Wealth Creation, it is amazing on any parameter you take. Whether it is China with a Trillion Dollar Foreign Exchange reserve, World's large corporation Market Cap (Google, Citi, WalMart) of each over several hundred Billion Dollars, Governments Trade Surpluses, Indian Government Direct Taxes Growth of over 60%, Worldwide sustained economic growth for last 5 years even though Oil is selling at record high of $70+ per barrel - on any account what has been achieved now is unprecedented in the modern history.   

There are several complex happenings that have enabled this including Globalization. Being an Engineer and Software person, I would like to think it is because of Computers and Internet revolution (When I say Computers I do include Mobile Phones as well). Think about any task in modern research/science, business, life, medicine, banking/finance - there is no task that is not influenced by Computers and Internet. 

It can range:

• From preparing a thesis for a PhD, where you can research papers from around the world (which would have been impossible to do  2 decades back at this cost and time)  and hence stand on other giants shoulders
• Exchange real-time data and do complex calculations for fundamental research including DNA analysis
• Access to best written courseware and training materials used for Education
• Access to world wide economic trends
• Learning from Management best practices and mistakes from around the world

and so on... In all these (and you can add hundreds of more items) Computers and Internet have touched and improved productivity at every facet of our present day life.

Do you have a say on this, leave your comments.

In India we often observe Mediocrity everywhere. It is deep rooted, right from Office Assistants to Politicians. Other than in Education, we are often satisfied with Average performance. That's why we still hear grandfather's talking of how things were punctual and better under British rule 60 years back - how Trains ran on time, etc. I was reminded of this topic today when I read this article in LiveMint that has brought made this observation nicely.

I am optimist and I certainly see things improving, especially with globalization and more awareness to world wide events.

TiE Chennai usually brings practitioners & champions of Entrepreneurship to speak about their story in its monthly sessions. Recently it brought out one such session (29/06/2007) by the 2003 women entrepreneur of the Year Ms. Hemu Ramaiah, CEO of Landmark.

Hemu Ramaiah, who needs little introduction, shared her truly inspirational entrepreneurial journey especially the challenges & triumphs in setting up one of the leading and famous bookstores in India - LANDMARK. I have recorded my notes taken during the session as a PDF document here (352.53 KB)

In the last 3 to 4 months, Indian Exporters are loosing sleep due to Rupee Strengthening by over 10% in a quarter. Though certainly in the long run it is good for the country to let Rupee appreciate - such a speedy appreciation is affecting all exporters. In software exports, this clearly wipes out nearly 50% of the profit (assuming the average of 20% profit in Indian Software services industry).  I feel government is using this as an effective and probably only (non-controversial for Left parties) tool they have in controlling inflation. I believe it is up to individual exporters to device their own startegies to tackle, right from using tools like Hedging (which will help in short run from further appreciation) and to increase the rates and diversifying markets. All these are easily said but for small and tiny exporters especially for Non-IT exporters it can be very difficult and a matter of survival. 

Yesterday Infosys Q1 FY '08 results proves that the problem is serious enough. Though their revene have grown by 7.5%  in Dollar Terms; the revenue in Rupee terms has remained constant around Rs.3500 crores.

In this connection, instead of saying more I would like to refer you to this superb interview with Mr.Lakshmi Narayanan (Vice-Chairman of CTS). No one could have said it better. And that's what I admire about Mr.Lakshmi Narayanan, his ability to see the issue not only from the biggies perspective but from the entire industry's spectrum. Read the interview in PDF format: "Rising Rupee a Blessing for China"

Just when I was about to post this, I saw a story on governments relief package, I am yet to study it so I will talk about it in a later post.

Recently eWeek carried an article Offshoring 2.0: The Post-India World - "Experts agree that India will soon no longer be the biggest offshoring center". I found the article to be baseless, shallow and far from truth. With the world economy (and Indian economy) growing for last 3 years at a stretch, many people want to stand away from the crowd and become instant doom sayers. It is sad eWeek wants to join the bandwagon of Prophets of Doom.

The article doesn't name the experts who say it is doomed or the studies other than the one by its sister organization IDC on a study of cities worldwide. Let me substantiate my views with our experience in Vishwak.

The article talks about increase in salaries as a primary (and only) reason for this, so let me take that up first:

1. Faster career growth - No doubt the Salary in India is increasing day by day. We have seen our salary outflow doubling in the last 24-36 months (this is apart from our Team Strength Increase). Just this raw data can be very misleading here and you can easily portray doom from this. Dig deeper and you will find this. We have found our people to be more ambitious than in the past, taken up more responsibility and grown up in their career. So we have been able to get better billing rates for the same person, obviously you don't want Person "A" to keep earning the same money for the company year on year. You want it to increase. This is more than productivity increase I am talking here, I am talking about a Software Engineer, becoming a Module Lead, Project Lead, Project Manager and so on. Here Indian IT companies have mastered the balance between career growth to technology training and hands on experience. It has taken Indian IT companies more than 2 decades to reach here. I doubt whether China or Vietnam or East Europe can come to this level instantly. No doubt one day they will come here, but it will take them atleast 5 to 10 years and by then Indian IT companies would have leap-frogged to the next level.
2. About a decade back when offshoring started from western countries to India it was primarily cost arbitrage of 1:10. Today it is not 1:10, but still significant and at many cases still at 1:3 or 1:4 levels. Senior level people salaries have certainly narrowed with US levels, but still there is a 1:3 or at least 1:2 advantage to India. Entry level salaries in India have grown but even now they are not even closer to US figures. Taking the minimum wage in many US states at $10 per hour, still there exists a cost advantage at a minimum of 1:2 levels to India's advantage and obviously software engineers in US get many times more than $10 per hour. Only graduates from IIT & IIM you will find higher salaries and clearly they are exceptions as they are premium across the world.

Next comes the productivity, process advantages:

1. Don't forget the complexity and scale of projects Indian companies are handling. Most of the CMM Level 5 and CMMI companies are based in India and compare that with East Europe and China, it will speak for itself. Just like China having the worlds largest manufacturing units, India has some of the largest Software Engineering campuses. Imagine where else in the world you can get thousands of software engineers in a day, get them organized into teams and start working - all the infrastructure, process, learnings for doing this is available only in India. In the last decade probably Silicon Valley had this, but now undoubtedly it is India. And again this has taken Indian companies a minimum of 2 decades to achieve this far.
2. Software writing is not all about English language, though it is a huge requirement. It is about Creativity and Lateral thinking. I am not saying that all Engineers who graduate in India or who join IT work force in India have it. But India has the highest percentage of these people, again this has been the result of 2 decades of work to come here.
3. I am sure Indian IT companies are already investing big monies more than their counterparts across the world on developing Automation and Code Generators, which will give them the advantage of solving problems using lesser human labour. I am only saying lesser and not about eliminating manual work altogether which may not happen in distant future.
4. Last comes the political stability that Democracy brings in (India is the world's largest Democracy that is proven to work for last 60 years) and the Law of Land (Intellectual Property protection) that Indian Judiciary brings in (though it is very slow compared to western countries).

Related links:

• Business week has covered the same IDC story here
• Check out the full presentation (and video) I made last year on why I believe Indian IT Exports will only grow?

Economic Times newspaper today carried couple of interesting facts about Mobile usage in India:

1. Mobile VAS (Value Added Service) business in India is poised to touch Rs.8,200 crores this fiscal - a 65% growth from Rs.4,950 crores in previous year. This reinforces our believe on the huge demand for Mobile Content Management.
2. India has 9.27 Million PC Internet Subscribers, against 31.3 Million users who access Internet through their Mobile devices. One out of every five mobile users (165.1 Million Mobile Subscribers) access Internet from their phones.  
3. For the first time in recent Telcom history in India, ARPU is growing but currently the growth is happening only in CDMA operators. So there seems to be some hope at the end of the tunnel for Telcos.

Reading this, I remembered an Interview I gave few years back "Mobile Phones will be the First and Only Computer for Many in Developing Countries".

I feel someone in Civil Aviation Ministry is reading my blog posts on Airports or I am just lucky. Eitherways so far it has been only for the better.

Few months back I posted an idea on developing Puducherry Airport and boom few weeks later government is considering it. I talked about improving connectivity to green field Airports and now it seems Civil Aviation Ministry is considering a plan to do high speed rail links. The trains will run from city centre to the respective airports at 160-180 kmph, will allow city check-in. They are considering 10 ten major cities in the country to have this facility. But the cost looks staggering, just for Delhi Connaught Place to Delhi Airport (a project in piepline) will cost Rs.3,200 crores. This was reported in 30/Jul/07 Economic Times Page 13 of Chennai edition (I couldn't find the story online).