Thursday, February 19, 2009
How I spent the Extra Second of 2008......
I love Padma....
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
How Much Secular Are we???
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Slumdog who is not a Millionaire......
'Work' or 'Crime' ?
Saturday, February 14, 2009
We don't know what holds,we six........
Friday, February 13, 2009
India's Fascination with Valentine's Day.....
Thursday, February 12, 2009
A Cruel Quirk of Fate.......
Is it Recession or simply a correction for Indian Economy?
People now days are talking about recession everywhere. It has become a talk of town. But what exactly is recession? In economics, the term recession generally describes the reduction of a country’s GDP for at least two quarters while the usual dictionary definition is “ a period of reduced economic activities”, a business cycle contraction. It is visible through real personal income, employment, industrial production and whole-sale retail sale, besides decline in real GNP(GDP+exports-imports).
Sensex……. Correcting itself
Normally, recession starts with the crash in the stock market. The Indian stock market crashed in 2008, but wasn’t it enjoying an unrealistic high? The sensex level of 20000 were unheard until October 2007, making India the 20th nation in the world to have seen its stock market benchmark touch this milestone. It gradually reached its peak in January 2008 touching all time high 21000. But with in 10 days the market crashed by more than 2000 points and downward movement had begun.
But this is not the time to panic. It’s not that people have stopped making money in market, yes they are making money. Remember , ‘for every seller, there is a buyer in the market’
Realty….. the correction has begun
Owning a dream home in India especially in metropolitan cities had become a dream which couldnot be fulfilled by most city dwellers. The reason simply being unrealistic high prices of homes and rising home loan interest rates.
It slowly became a seller’s market and real estate giants continued to construct flats and apartments, but when there are no takers how can they make profits? Thus there needs to be a correction in real estate segment also. What we see today is not a crash in real estate segment, it is in fact a correction. It may be painful for time being but situation would start looking up when other economic factors will boost.
Industries across all sectors………. A correction has begun
Industries across all sectors were enjoying a boom till mid 2008. But various economic factors have put an unwanted pressure on them and a slowdown is seen across all sectors. Be it IT or aviation segment, the effect is everywhere.take the case of aviation industry, when the industry was booming, the players in the segment hired manpower on a large scale at high cost without taking into account cost to company(CTC) and return on the investment(ROI). The industries flourished and so did the employees. But, with the recent slowdown it is becoming increasingly difficult for these players to bear high costs and hence retrenchment.
In fact, industries across all segments, finance, manufacturing are bringing about correction with in themselves.
On a concluding note………..
The global nature of current recession scenario of world economy is bound to affect Indian economy. Our economy is not insulated from these shocks. However the fundamentals of Indian economy are quite strong. We can look at current recession as a correction of Indian economy and start brushing up our basics to emerge as a savior of world economy.
I want to work with Idris Jala………
Most of us may be unaware about this interesting personality Idris Jala. Idris Jala led the state-controlled Malaysia Airlines from brink of bankruptcy to record breaking profits. Now he wants to become what he calls a “five star value carrier”.
When Idris Jala became CEO at Malaysia Airlines, his goal was to keep the carrier flying. Now he wants to create a new breed of air services. Much has happened in his three years of intervention. Malaysia airlines, the southeast Asian country’s national carrier, was less than four months away from running out of cash when Jala took charge,in December 2005. In such a short notice he had no chance to change the organization culture and structure. The whole process would have taken a year’s time. At the same time he has to deal with inadequate yield management, an inefficient network, and poor cost control.
He straightforward attacked the anomalies in profit and loss statement (P&L). In his first board meeting he asked members “If you have to control the costs, you just go and cut the costs. If your network is inefficient, get rid of routes that are bleeding cash. And if you have problem with low yield, fix the yield.” What else you can expect from a man with no prior experience in airlines industries comes, studies P&L statement for one hour and next hour calls its board and picks up the problem. He even went to the extent of selling off of airlines headquarters for Rs. 191 crore that helped him to run the industry for 20 more days.
Then he made the turnaround plan for airlines public. Publishing helped the industry to build a winning coalition not only with the government but also with other stakeholders, like unions, the staff, and the public. Being upfront about P&L and making it all transparent were very important to bringing coalition together. With a bit of stability coming up in two months he set up small labs where he insisted on asking the experts to work on problems and come up with fast and sustainable results that can be implemented. The labs worked on profitable routes and business solutions. Today, the industry has individual P&L statement for each route-by day, by month, by flight number all data counting up to 160,000 P&Ls, which he receives everyday on his blackberry sharp at 5pm.
For any work that seems to be impossible to you, provides you an opportunity. First of all, you must believe deep inside that it can be done. If the leader does not believe in the journey, then it cannot begin. The leader is no one special; to be a leader you do not need followers. If one becomes leader of his own ideas then there would be people to follow you, support you and encourage you. A leader is like someone who cuts a clearing in dense tropical jungle. Everyone else is under the canopy, where they cannot see the sky and it is very depressing. The leader has to bring people over to that clearing, into the space where innovation begins. The single biggest thing a leader brings to a turnaround is hope.
The industry achieved the profits that they estimated to earn by 2008 in 2007 itself. So they have started dreaming big innovations. I want to be part of this industry where your innovations get reflected in P&L statement, where all dare to live their dreams.