Pgh - the most livable city

To my own personal experience and absolute delight - Pittsburgh is rated as "the most livable city".

The nine subcategories mentioned are all that matters for me:

1. housing affordability (cost of living);
2. transportation;
3. jobs;
4. education;
5. climate;
6. crime;
7. health care;
8. recreation;
9. ambience (museums, performing arts, restaurants

Housing was very very cheap and hence, at times, I regret on my decision to move to NYC for work (my current employer offers the same pay in pgh and nyc). Crime rate is low in Pgh and hence, the insurance rates are low. UPMC provides healthcare right then and there.

Transportation is convenient if you have a car.
Jobs are good for those who have it. For those who are looking, it may not be the best market !

Well, as I've mentioned in an earlier post of mine, if I get tired of the city, I will move back to Pgh :)

value added by ivys!

Donald Asher has come out with yet another interesting writeup for schooling !
Check this out: http://teacherweb.com/CA/PacificaHighSchoolOxnard/MrsGillett/Is-the-Ivy-League-Worth-It_.pdf

Does Ivy League matter (beyond finance)?

Also, another advice of having least debt when one gets out is very important. Developing social skills and technically skills is an equally important advice. Thus, getting into an environment where there is a good balance between to the two makes more sense.

This is what I was thinking when I used to see the undergrad students at CMU. CMU is too expensive when it comes to learning undergrad education. Then, why invest so much when a person from some other school is also going to join the same job? Also, these days recruiters and companies have smartened up. With good training programs, they would hire folks from lesser known univs and then train them in order to drive down the prices of the labor from these highly known univs.

So, candidates who are applying need to think if they are getting a good value-added when they join CMU or are similar returns possible elsewhere (say Kelly, or the likes). Returns will vary from person to person based on which skill is valued how much by the individual who is evaluating it! For instance, developing social skills may be valued highly by someone lacking it but may be valued less by someone already possessing it.

Infosys BPO and eSCM

Infy BPO gets distinction:
http://itsqc.cs.cmu.edu/Default.aspx?EntryUID=e9d290e7-e800-42c3-8700-49d5baddf279

Check out this article. First assessment led to Level 4. This has happened for the first time. Infy has yet another feather in its cap !! This is an outstanding achievement for Infy and shows how all its arms are well-enabled.

Graduate !

The last week at CMU was fairly eventful. Here's the account for pre-graduation, graduation, and post-graduation.

Pre-graduation:
The semester got over and I was partying non-stop ! Two parties in one evening on Thursday - first, at Prof Steve Roehrig's place and then later at Firehouse with Turkish Students Association (TASA-Pgh). The initial one was sober and a good opportunity to meet the faculty members in a social setting. TASA party was fairly nice as I met a new dance partner Ashley ! Next Friday, we went to Matrix for another night out with her friends.

Graduation: This was a memorable event for me - not because I was graduate but for reasons as follows:

First, the graduation dinner was a cool plan by Val - this one was at Le Mont ! As CMU represents, it was a fairly international dinner - ppl from origins of US, Iran, China, Bosnia, and India !

After the dinner, myself and Gorana went to Firehouse as she wanted to check out the place.

Second, Val's mom was present for cheering me up at the diploma handing over ceremony for MISMs. My parents didn't make it to the US but I had someone from my American family to cheer me up !

Third, Bal & Val gave me the exact gift that I wanted :) Val's mom gave me a graduation gift too. Her actual gift was being there for cheering me!

Graduation day was a day to cheer an effort and the sacrifices that went into getting the degree. Clearly, I was not ready to leave school once I was there until April. In April, something happened and I was so ready to graduate - I feel the emptiness without the school even now !

When I came to CMU, I had a situation similar to the one Odysseus had in Homer's Odyssey. On one hand, he had the beautiful Calypso and on the other, he had his kingdom Ithaca. Odysseus went for Ithaca and I went for Carnegie Mellon U. I wish that alike him, I will be able to get what I want.

Post graduation:

After graduation, I left my townhouse in Sq. Hill. Believe me, I was happy to leave it - lol !

I went to meet Bal and Val for this one last dinner at IL Pizzaiolo (Bal said that I must have Pizza out there before I leave Pgh). They used wood heated ovens to churn out some delicious and sizzling pizzas. The cheese was unmatchable. They beat the Giordano's (Chicago fame) hands down. However, I got some information due to which my stay in Pgh got extended. In a way, it was a fortunate accident as I got to have some family time. :)

Next day, Val bhabhi made some tasty Chinese dinner and we watched another movie. Yea, she fed me just like my Bhabhi would ! Later that evening, we watched Da Vinci Code (yea, this was a movie on my pending-list). Finally, on Saturday evening ,we went to horse racing at Meadow Lands. That was a fun evening and then we watched Notes on a Scandal.

Last day in Pgh morning, I checked out Pandolfo's with Bal and Val. It was a sumptuous meal. While leaving, I was sobby and almost cried while I sat in the car. I have decided that if I am unable to settle down in NYC, I shall go back to Pgh !

MSFT's India research

MSFT has taken the research in India further ahead. This is one of the ways by which knowledge-oriented firms are tightly integrating their supply chains. They are having partnerships with IISc and IITs.

Check this link regarding the work they are doing. I feel that optimization of water usage in agriculture is an essential resaerch for India. Why is discussed in later parts. However, I end this segment with the conclusion that either MSFT is being a really good partner and enhancing their image in India OR MSFT seems to have struck a deal with GoI about helping India in whichever way they can for getting the GoI contracts :) In either case, it works for benefit of India. I hope the researchers/students pick up these projects and get them to the levels where by they become practical and freely available. For instance, Virtual India - a la Google Maps for India by MSFT !


About agri development in India.

As India becomes wealthier, the price of non-tradeable services and wages will increase as the general price level goes up (Balassa Samuelson effect). However, revenues from agriculture will not go up as much (they will go up a bit on count of better practices). Therefore, agriculture as an occupation will become less viable. Therefore, on cost-side, economies of scope and scale will happen ==> we will see consolidation due to smaller farmers finding it infeasible to compete. Mechanized farming will come into the picture as this consolidation happens and the fixed costs requried for mechanized farming start getting justified for the larger farmers.

Now, what must the Govt of India (GoI) do?
One of my mentors suggested that GoI must use agricultural subsidy to redeploy agri labor force to some other work.

I feel that this is an extreme step. I think that the education budget can be increased to create vocational institutes which will help ppl choose re-training themselves. If GoI does not have a budget for making the vocational institutes then they must
give monetary incentives (say, tax incentives) to private sector companies who can make provide it for profits equal to the tax incentives. If none of this happens then a social entrepreneur can take this up as a non-profit business concept.

what area of strategy to specialize in ?

Another common question by prospective management students:
What area of strategy to specialize in?

Answer:
What area depends on what you want to do and your skillsets.

Option 1:
If you have good project management skills then you might want to do implementation of strategy. This is important because it is often found that the implementation of a strategy fails to match with the original vision and goal of the project (I consider an entire business as one large project here)

Option 2:
If you do not have good project management skills but have good analytical skills w.r.t. market research, economics (both macro and micro), design skills, etc then you might consider designing the strategy as your option.

For best results, a firm is well-off giving the design work to someone who has these skills as well as possesses the experience mentioned in the earlier option. Experience is important in order to make the design "pragmatic". Often, the companies cannot procure such folks and do a trade-off on either experience or design skills due to shortage of time.

Bottomline: Get a better grip of fundamental concepts for the field before thinking of strategy area. It is a buffet dinner out there - you yourself need to figure out what suits your palate, appetite, and digestive system.

graduation

This is a follow-up post to an earlier post here. Comtemplating on my journey of MISM - naaaah, there's plenty of time for that later.

Graduation's in the air and there are celebrations all around. One full week of parties and catching up with friends, et al.

Last Sat night, we went clubbing to Firehouse to celebrate this one last party with colleagues before everyone disperses for their internships and full time positions.

Yday evening, there was a welcome event at Six Penn Kitchen for the newcomers (the event became slightly unpleasant because there was barely any food after 5.30pm and party was scheduled from 5pm to 7pm- I must say that the organizers did a dismal show in the party estimation! The choice of place was good though.

Tonight, some of the existing students have a dinner at Anisha's place - her parents have come down to visit her and her brother for 3 weeks. She's invited everyone for a dinner made by her mom :)

Tomorrow night, there's another party at Prof Steve Roehrig's house !

Friday night, I plan to go clubbing - but Pgh night life is not as active on Fri nights - unless there are $1 drinks - lol ! Letsee - I missed Diesel lounge last Friday night when Anisha visited it - I might go there this Fri night.

Thereafter, on Saturday evening, a graduation dinner with my Indo-American family (Bal, Val, Val's mom and some other guests) at LeMont ! This is right after MISM/MSIT ceremonies in the evening.

Catching up with friends over coffee, lunches, dinners is the routine for this week prior to the graduation. I have to make a list of who all are left to be met.

I've to get my gown and cap in the meanwhile. Also, packing for the move from Pgh to NYC is going on. That's the only painful part these days.

customer service

Yesterday, I interacted with a Geico agent for getting my plan changed and having a new quote. This official was amazing. I was trying to put a finger on what was making this consumer facing employee better than the other call center agents. Some of the points were:

1. Emotional Quotient (EQ):

The person seemed to be emotionally intelligent. High EQ helps the consumers as it becomes more of a social interaction rather than a routine call-center call.

On this front, I had a terrible experience with the IBM Thinkpad call center. With terrible, I dont mean that the SLA was violated or the person was nasty. The agent was simply too thrifty in the interactions and appeared socially inept, if you can say that.

McKinsey backs my empirical evidence with a more detailed study here.

This reminds me one of my Infy bosses (he was way up in the food chain but somehow I was reporting to him). This individual had good customer interaction due to higher EQ. What mattered was not only the action but also the reaction to certain events. His reactions were well-thought.

I think in sourcing management, companies must ensure this part in the vendor selection process - the EQ of the client-facing personnel.


2. Good knowledge of their domain:

The responses made by the agent while I was thinking out loud were critical to my decision making. Those inputs were well explained w.r.t. pros and cons.

3. Ethics:

"Only do things which if posted on front page of The Times will not make you feel ashamed." says Warren Buffett. There's so much truth in this.

One has to be consistently ethical in order to gain respect and save face. As the Oracle of Omaha says further "It takes 20 years to build the reputation and just 5 mins to ruin it" This is so true. It is reflected in Geico, which is his holding company. The frontline will be capable of selling more and more services with this attitude.

I conclude this post with the following:
Firms training customer facing employees must impart a foundation of base-values in EQ to all their customer facing employees. This is a knowledge-based era and the tacit interactions have outgrown the implicit ones and thus, the need of having a higher EQ.

where do MISMs go?

Prospectives frequently ask this question to me in order to judge RoI of MISM program: "Where do MISMs go (after they graduate)?"

I decided to blog on this as it is really easy for them to check.

Professional social networking group such as linkedin are open and can be easily checked out by searching on keyword "MISM". They are everywhere - consulting firms such as Deloitte, McKinsey, Booz Allen Hamilton, etc....product firms such as Google, Microsoft, Oracle, etc financial services firms such as Goldman Sachs, Barclays, UBS,etc , and on linked in there are atleast 156 users (while I am posting this ..) who are returned as a search result to MISM.

After knowing this and the avg base from career services page on MISM website, they can judge alum's sals from salary.com or something. Stop harassing existing students or alums about what salaries folks in their batches got - it is not only impolite (politically) but also indicates immaturity of the candidate to discuss salaries with an alum. Salaries vary widely. As a thumb rule, ppl with experience tend to get higher salaries than those without. However, along with experience, relevance is often important. If your earlier experience is not relevant to the job offer you are getting there is a high probability of having lesser salary. Besides, the progressions will be smoother.

I like to give an analogy of a buffet dinner to those who ask me such questions. It's a dinner table out there - you must pick or get prepared to pick what suits you. For instance, some ppl may not like consulting and hence, there's no point for them to go towards that. Some other set may like coding and they should go for that. Its a soul-searching process which one must undergo and not just get a job for a "paycheck".

There are ppl in the current and previous batches who have turned down higher paying offers (and I am talking large differences - to the order of US$35k) in order to choose the work which they want to do. This is a sign of maturity!

I often say that you dont have to be a MISM to get a huge sal - that you can get by doing coding on Wall St (lol !) . The reasons for joining the program must be right or else at the end you will be left unsatisfied.

Define what you want to do and search in that direction. The result may even indicate that MISM is not what you want. In that case, do not invest in it just for the sake of doing a Masters.

Frankly speaking, CMU's inter-disciplinary approach is awesome and based on one's readiness to slog, one can achieve their objectives if worked well. Of course, CMU is Computer U. and hence, one has to keep in mind that one should not crib about not making it for some trading position after MISM (though there are ppl in the past who have made it). For achieving that, there are different programs (may be different schools) which one must consider.

Bottomline: Do your research well, before asking questions to an alum or an existing student. Then, ask crisp, concise, and precise questions while presenting context as well.

MRO boom in India

In the current mini semester, I took a course called Marketing Applications of Data Mining (SAS was used as the mining tool) by Prof Alan Montgomery. The objective to take this course was learn analytical Marketing concepts and techniques (from an entrepreneurial and consulting perspective). That was achieved !

The course was fairly intense and demanding (with me having to provide atleast 10 hours a week). We had a presentation in which we had to present our marketing plan to the Sr. Management for a fictitious firm named Cell2Cell.

Recently, I read this article on India's possibility to become the market research hub of the world. Market Research Outsourcing or MRO is picking up pretty fast and one of the firms that's making headway is Markelytics.

I am unsure if this company wants to get bought by some other firm. However, I think, one of the Indian service providers must buy it before one of the MNCs or Google Analytics buys it. The reason to buy is that it can become one of the offerings for the consulting arms of these service provider firms and help them climb up the value-chain faster.

Besides, it can serve as an internal shared-services unit for other arms of the consulting firms. Consulting involves rigorous analytical research with hardcore data. Most of the consulting companies fail to do it and the consulting presentations are based on superficial research than an in-depth data-driven one (no matter how much they claim they dig, it ain't enough). As Dr. Montgomery says, "Data mining leads to amazing results and sometimes inexplicable ones !". However, data is data and hence, must be respected.

eSCM-SP best practices must be laid out by service providers such as Markelytics at an earlier stage to ensure that they can differentiate themselves and provide greater satisfaction than the regular vendors to the client. Clients will have to get ready with eSCM-CL as well.

eSCM-SP done !

...finally, my first step in this direction is done. eSCM-SP is done !

Dr. Hefley introduced me to the current provision that CMU students can attend eSCM certification courses for no charge at the ITSqc's Execution Education Center and I hopped on to grab the opportunity.

The Service Provider model was authored by Mark Paulk, Elaine Hyder, and Keith Heston. I had the opportunity to go for a dinner with Dr. Paulk, and Dr. Siegel on the first evening. It was a delightful event at the Monterey Bay with a great view of Pittsburgh during sunset.

Executives from a leading global service provider and a leading financial services firm had come down for the SP executive education.

On the concluding day, I rushed through my test to the speaker talk on Services Research by Robert Morris, VP of Services Research. I introduced to the concept of industry-academia collaboration between IBM and CMU via CMUSMO and he was amenable for such an arrangement. CMU already has an arrangement with IBM as is indicated on this page.

Thus, I had a heavy dose of Services arena in this week !
The whole schedule made me highly efficient as I had high productivity....yea, they say, adversity is the mother of all inventions....lol !

social solutions to poverty

Dr. Scott Myers Lipton conducted a session on social solutions to poverty. He presented some interesting facts. He flew down from San Jose on invitation.

Apparently, he is a clearcut democrat as he didn't support policies by Bush administration regarding acting as per the Church to reduce poverty. Besides, he also appreciated the Clinton era for the reduction of poverty. One of the significant potshots at the Bush adminisitration included removal of the word poverty by Mr. Bush as it is too abstract. I didn't know that trivia - lol !

According to him, the top ten effective and interesting ways to eliminate poverty were:
10. Provide assets to young women and men, as suggested by Thomas Paine (1796) and recently by Michael Sherraden (2000)
9. Living wages, as indicated in Robert Pollin (1998) and Matthew Carrey (1830)
8. 40 Acre and a mule, as suggested by The Freedman's Bureau w.e.p. Du Bois (1901) and Randall Robinson (2000)
7. Worker owned cooperatives, as suggested by Huey Newton
6. Public works, as being worked upon in the Gulf coast Civic work project
5. Centers of civic engagement, as suggested by Huey Long (1935)
4. Re-distribute wealth - of course in a sensible way - basically a capped taxation
3. End hunger, as suggested by EPIC by Upton Sinclair in 1934
2. Strengthen unions (by far this was one of the stupidest one I must have heard from him)
1. Economic bill of Human rights, as suggested by Martin and Franklin.

What I didn't like about the presentation was that in order to be sensational he was taking some of the assumptions to the extreme. He was making one feel bad about the DJIA reaching about 13k. Some of the facts were not being presented in the correct light.

Also, I didn't like his emphasis on the US focus. I rarely agree with Mr. Bush. But, on this one, I definitely do agree - the removal of the word Hunger because it is truly abstract (especially in the US context). If we look at the Gates' efforts and Buffet's help and their interview on Charlie Rose show, we will realise that they focussed their efforts to help across races, across geographies, across gender, and across world in absolute terms. That sounds more intelligent than a mere US focus. Also, I wonder why Mr. Lipton did this today - was it for sensation?...was it for attraction from the crowd? ... cos he mentioned that he did some work in Africa, etc. however, he repeatedly emphasized on America....which was something that bothered me. Social solutions must be across the board and not just restricted to the US. I am not against the US but just vouching for a universal solution. Huge imbalances lead to issues such as the World Wars and hence, the concern.

I feel that as long as the society is material-minded, it will be difficult to reduce this gap and it might keep on increasing. Of course, Clinton administration did some good things to reduce poverty proportions and create new jobs and the Raegan and Bush administrations did some stupid things to increase poverty proportions. However, some of the above remediations are not good enough - for instance the strengthening of the unions.

This reminds me of his presentation of fact that form 1947 to 1979, the poor got richer faster than the rich got richer. This is an ideal climate which we wish to attain. However, after 1979, the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. Thus, there are few historical incidents that lead to this. The housing market was about to collapse in this time frame when the administration came up with some measures to forgive mistakes by the bankers and bail them out. There was an adverse supply shock in form of oil problem. After that, there started forming a lobby of pre-boomers who started asking each other for favors. Also, the boomers were more and more material minded (This was the culture that cherished Madonna et al. ) Thus, the poor got poorer and rich got richer in this second era.

The whole presentation also took me back to the discussion of Nickel and Dimed book by Barbara Ehrenreich.

concept of retention team at the work-place

In hot job markets similar to that of the current job market, some employers definitely need to have this concept of retention team at their workplace. This is similar to the US telecom service providers and/or financial service providers providing incentives for customers to stick out with them.

From my limited exposure, I can say - some of the Indian software service providers, some of the US consulting firms, etc need to have this concept.

Recently, an acquaintance of mine, who has abt 2 yrs SAP experience with Accenture, decided to look out. To his delight, Deloitte offered him a grand package. Also, Deloitte sponsors MBA if you were with them for 2 yrs and promise to stay for 2 yrs after MBA. Thus, it was a no-brainer for him.

He was called by HR from Accenture telling him that he is getting an out-of-turn bonus and other incentives. However, the total package that they planned to offer him was lower than what Deloitte could offer him - so, it was a no-brainer for him. Besides, MBA education funding is another lucrative attraction for him.

Jack and Suzanne Welch expressed concern in their podcast and article on Brain Drain. Private Equity firms or PE are poaching away the talent from the regular companies either directly or by competing on campuses with extremely high pay packages. They suggest a retention approach of having a separate track (or as they call it promotion slope) for such achievers who can be identified earlier in their careers. For this reason, middle to senior managers must know their teams well. This forces them to be detail-oriented as they will have to sit with their HR managers to see what William F. Pounds, CMU alumnus and current Dean @ MIT, says "Net Flow of Talent". This will require use of sophisticated skills such as data-mining in order to have a slight edge over others who run the show on an ad-hoc basis.

I feel that this has to be done by the executive team and not by the middle managers. Middle managers who had to climb the ladder rung-by-rung may have counter-productive emotions involved in the process of giving some other newcomer a faster track than what they had.

I hope the concept of retention team evolves further.

bomb scare at hamburg hall, CMU

Here's the article from Post Gazette. Hamburg Hall, a historic landmark (1900), is the place where my program(MISM) has its lounge.

I will not comment anything as this was a routine alarm for a suspicious liquid and cannot be correlated to heightened security post VTech's unfortunate incident - CMU security was always fairly vigil.

mba in itsm

I could hardly believe till I saw this - there is an MBA program with ITSM concentration - at Dallas School of Management.

Long live ITSM !

My blog for exploreitsm is here.

Citi slashes IT

Here's an article on Citi's current strategy for cost-cutting. The cuts would be mostly on cost-center of Citi - IT. This was bound to happen - the firms were just getting their feet wet (or maturing the relationship with the service providers) in the last 3 or 4 years. This is backed by evidence from a previous article pointing to a Deloitte survey in 2003.

While helping students think through their offers (at MISM), I had always asked them to assess profiles based on nature of job, what they want, etc other than just the pay. When it came to financial firms, one of the dimensions I asked them to consider was whether they were a part of the revenue drivers for the firm or the cost centers for the firm. If they were the cost-centers then there is a possibility that they will have to face one of these days (where they face the axe) !

I get some pleasure in seeing that my thought process was in the right direction. However, I feel sorry for those who will be under the axe because of this step by Citi.

The article highlights on them using offshore services providers ! Election year has come and we will see increasing backlash against outsourcing. However, for global firms such as Citi - it doesn't make sense to run operations from here if they can be done cheaper in some other location on the globe and is able to do so with reasonable SLA adherence.

However, outsourcing need not be the only option. Use of ITIL concepts and other best practices can help reduce costs and make IT more agile and competitive as well. Besides, mindset of converting these cost centers to revenue centers with the existing staff will help achieve the golden middle path - however, that would take more time than Wall St. can wait before next quarter or year ! Also, that would involve significant re-training of existing folks.

Outsourcing, if undertaken, must adhere to eSCM-CL principles developed at ITsqc by an inter-disciplinary set of researchers led by Bill Hefley ! It is a near-complete model w.r.t. dimensions to think about when it comes to Sourcing initiatives.

On an arbitrarily tangential note, a good choice to go long on would be Indian services stocks - which heavily serve these folks. Long live Indian service providers !

What Board Needs to know about IT !

Board IT Engagement Maturity Model.
Yes, Yet another Maturity Model ! This one deals with how boards of directors are approaching information technology and how they must approach.

Ken Porrello, principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP, introduced this concept at CMU today for a set of ISM grad students. He has close to 20 years of experience in various industries and currently, oversees some of the India operations as well. He is one of the senior partners at the TI practice, where I would be joining in June this year.

Phase 1 of his research included Boards of 455 companies in the United States. Phase 2 is going to include a broad participation in form of 1000 global companies. The phase 1 outcomes can be seen here. The magazine Corporate Board Member also mentioned about this research initiative at Deloitte in their magazine.

At the end, he applauded CMU for having such an interdisciplinary program such as the MISM program.

international finance

Pulchritudinous purveyor of intellectual zest - that's what I will term Prof. Chris Telmer as !

I wish I could've taken his 12-unit course than a 6-unit one - but most of the MBA courses at Tepper are designed to be 6-unit ones.

I wish so because I have rarely seen a professor as involved in his work as him. He starts his concepts with extremely basic premises. This is the hallmark of most of the experts - they are able to express their thoughts with simplicity - be it Prof. Chris Telmer or be it Rakesh Jhunjhunwala !

Today, we had this video on international economics in the form of the DVD Commanding Heights - an awesome set of DVDs - I am going to make sure that I go through them before I graduate.

A sample of the same is posted below.



Concepts of International Finance are absolutely essential for a manager in the future with both goods and services becoming tradeable throughtout the nations of this planet. Prof. Bob Dalton had introduced me to Prof. Telmer's class as one of Bob's International Business class was focussed on how to handle opportunities, risks, etc in International business scenario w.r.t. International Finance. I realised that in order to develop a deeper intuition, I need to ask Bob for guidance and he guided me to undertake Chris's class.

Finally, Prof. Chris Telmer doesn't go to agree with what all the big boys have to say. With correct rationale and strong supporting argument, he even criticized the hoopla being carried out by notable speakers (Buffett, Roubini, Roach et al) about the US trade-deficits. The paper can be found here on the NYU website.

Finally, on a resigning note, here's a video on how India saved its day by having meritorious ppl in place.


I hope the current Govt remains in place for some time to come !

challenging times ahead...

Next week is going to be hectic ! Mid-terms, assignments, taxes, what not !
Time management will be critical and keeping good health would be essential.

I might sound masochistic while inflicting this pain on myself by taking up so many courses though only 3 units worth work was required for graduation. But hey, I wanted to see if I can do it- this one last time :) I started off school with 7 courses and ending with similar workload.

Letsee how it goes !

keywords on your resume

I knew about this all along: Check out this article for more information for the same.

No wonder, the amount of interview calls I received reflected a high hit-rate because I didn't laze out and submit the same resume to every position. Crafting the resume to fit the position advertised is important and well-reflected in this article. I had been searching for such an exhaustive article since long and finally, Marc's email showed me the same.

I had no idea that there exists services like these - using which one can get certified as a resume-writer. Services are getting highly specialized and hence, the need for qualifications. This highlights how important one's resume can be - at least to get the foot in the door - thereafter, its all you !

...last mini...

In order to avoid suffering from Senioritis, I took up quite a challenging workload for this mini. Besides the regular project work going on for Citi and the Macroeconomics class (yea, its a full-length gig), I have the following on my platter:

Macroeconomics:
Prof Sleet continues this mini (yea, it's a full-length) further with Macroeconomics. We dig Ben Bernanke's book further for some more models, theories, etc.

International Finance:
As Prof Bob Dalton suggested, I have taken this course to learn how to finance cash flows in international business, and of course, how to manage risks (using say, hedging) and take advantage of opportunities made available by market sometimes.

Prof Chris Telmer has a specific chutzpah ! He is Canadian and pronounces "out" in the typical Canadian way. Besides, the part which makes the class interesting is his variety of interests. I couldn't believe when he mentioned Jimi Hendrix in the history of International Finance :) Very interesting. I look forward to see how this class shapes up. I am already excited with the first assignment as it was a good excercise for me.

Marketing Applications of Data Mining:
Fairly demanding on time. Learning curve involved is slightly steeper (as we have to learn SAS). However, that's a good thing. Heinz course on Data mining didn't have SAS involved and I wanted this eclectic mix (as its offered by Tepper) and not a pure Data Mining class (as offered by Heinz). Of course, nothing beats Auton Lab's data mining stuff at CMU !

Corporate Finance:
Lynn Pastor continues this semester with Corp Finance. (I have taken atleast one course per semester with her:)). Curriculum for Corporate Finance is fairly similar to Valuation class I have done and I think I may drop it eventually. Let me figure out my schedule in the next 2 weeks. The course does not have much demands - similar to earlier classes such as Accounting, Principles of Finance, etc

Sourcing Management:
Bill Hefley, ITsqc Director, is delivering this super-awesome course !

Man, he knows more about India than most of the Indians do (lol!). Of course some may argue that he is doing business with India and hence, must know about it. CMM Level 5 is created in Pittsburgh and implemented in Bangalore (this is a statement by my fellow colleague!). He knows Indian IT services business folks by names and they know him personally.

In this course, we go in depth with eSCM and several other aspects of Sourcing. This will be one of those dreamed of courses for me and I am fortunate that Bill chose to deliver it this semester :)

IS ProjecT:
Yes - The Project ! This is shaping up well and getting exciting with me studying more of ITIL and application of the principles to solve client's problems. We are close to entering the design phase soon.

Business Process Modeling:
I sampled this course last week and figured out that it is a great course. Karyn Moore, my academic advisor as well, is delivering this new course. Text book seems good and so does the tools involved in the course learning (IBM Websphere Business Modeler).

ITIL certification:
Have to get this done in this mini.

TAship for Enterprise Architectures course:
Yes - this mini the class is offered as a distance lecture making the dynamics completely different as compared to the earlier one. We had to change the syllabus, readings, nature of assignments, interaction protocol, etc. in order to ensure students get the most for their money.
Nice exercise though !

I have taken courses which demand quite a bit. The committment will be for 8 weeks and hence, I dont want to enter something I am not comfortable with. As you can see, this mini is fairly challenging w.r.t. time management. Off I go for the next meeting.

cap exempted

Soooooooo relieved to know from our Office of International Education expert on immigration matters today - "You are cap exempted". Yay - I dont have to worry about the damn caps (65k or 20k ...whichever).

I just have to do my OPT procedure with USCIS - no hassle of non-travel during the change of status filing as OPT still remains F1 status and employment authorization for the same is truly not change of status. Change of status will happen later - at the end of OPT when I file for H and that time, I dont have to wait till Oct 08 - lol

...Infy zindabad !

associate offers in indian b-schools !

Finally, Associate positions make a scene on the indian b-school campuses... Check out this article on the same ! Ppl wanting to invest in US B-schools now have some hard time to think - instead of investing 10s of thousands of $s, they can get a cheaper one in India- but the competition is intense.

So, someone might say - if one is capable of competing - it makes economic sense to get one in India. However, that's not the case. The # of associate positions is fairly low. In IIM-A, out of 235, only 12 associate positions were made. If you compare that vis-a-vis a US b-school campus, the ratios are different. Moreover, the experience and backgrounds of US bschool folks is richer (it is changing though - it is getting dominated by desi folks these days !).

However, I am glad to see this progress year after year. Schools such as ISB are placing huge pressure on IIMs to perform. Even if they have bureaucracy, they have to cater to demands. I still remember huge demand for managers was a topic of discussion in 2005. The demand is evident in the Indian labor markets. Many companies are promoting their engineers to management positions whenever they cant fill those up with MBAs. Alternatively, they hire managers from tier 2 and tier 3 schools which drives up demand for students from those schools resulting in huge boom.

Supply must be ramped up from qualitative and quantitative dimensions. Soft skills are extremely important for this workforce to be prove themselves to be globally competitive. Team spirits are extremely important and lonely wolves lose out in the long race. I see Indian schools still requiring the soft skills part to be developed !

Most of the foreign firms which hire on Indian firms are looking out for typeAs. Their hiring does not indicate that we have a globally competitive workforce which is capable of grooming leaders. Leaders are groomed in a different setup than the one provided by the Indian schools. I wish someday they progress to GROOM leaders !

neo biz harp

It is fairly apparent that my exams are over. :P

The Verizon article in WSJ today morning made me log this post. Verizon wants to get into gaming and other stuff in order to capture value of the market they are creating. Stupid ! - they didn't play it safe like AT&T. Their top managers shouted from the top of their lungs that ATT will find it difficult to expand capacities later on. Expand for who? AT&T spent only 4.3 b whereas Verizon spent 20b. A huge committment doesn't always result in a huge return. Verizon has several plans but the original visionaries of the FiOS deal are still around - ask them and they seem to be scared. Scared that their plans may not pan out what they originally planned it for.

For instance, in the gaming space, there is already this company in place: Digital Chocolate. Name of the company aptly suits it as it is going to indulge public in mass-consumption of the cellphone gaming.

Podshow is another firm which will take major piece of the content provision pie in this convergence game. It will be mostly the non Verizon firms which will come in and derive value from the high bandwidth networks made available. How can Verizon stop them from free-riding? Differential QoS is already in doubts due to the whole net-neutrality saga.

There is no point for Verizon to spend so much on the backbone in order to create such large networks which will eventually be used by others. One conspiracy theorist mentions to me that the person who politically forwarded this decision for laying out the fiber had personal interests in the entire affair. Neither the shareholders nor the BoD were convinced about this. So, what does a shareholder do? Sell !

btw, other neo-biz which excited me recently were: Tell Me, Akimbo, Good Technology

Tell Me: has created this seemingly huge platform already. Slowly, steadily, they plan to takeover. Before we even knew, they have 35 m folks working on their systems daily ! They arent the state of the art but they have been able to capture the market relatively fast. Personally, I love the Tmobile IVS - its awesome !!! However, in this world where network externalities come into play - Tell Me may start to rule !

Akimbo: Your wish is on demand ! This continues in my line of harp - IPTV and the digital convergence. Akimbo is well-positioned to take advantage ...they might be little too late to create a lock-in with set top boxes similar to those of 2Wire's or Scientific Atlanta's. However, they are making sure that they have the content !

Good Technology: got acquired by Motorola - dayyuuummm ! Motorola's fatherhood may either provide a huge impetus or suffocate this new startup's spirit. Let us see what happens. Good Technology take advantage of the fact that there are more cell phones than personal computers !

Now, I need to get going to prepare for an engagement tomorrow !

usability and free products: google, yahoo, microsoft

Can you imagine having a service provider (having no monopolistic advantages) trying to give you, a user, a hard time with their interface for your interaction. What do you do if you have other options? Switch !

Ease of use, and relevance are of prime importance. There is a reason that there exists a graduate program named "Human Computer Interaction" in some of the leading universities. There is a reason why these students get hired by most of the leading companies quickly. Ease of use does matter.

Check out why Google made it's way much ahead of its competitors such as Yahoo and Microsoft. Google has about 55%+ market of the search market. Yahoo is about 25% and Microsoft, a pithy 5-8%. There are many reasons and HCI is one of the prime ones. Larry Page, one of the Google founders, was a HCI grad student ! Their products beat Yahoo hands down. Microsoft was busy with anti-trust trial and totally lost track.

Microsoft has now started having good HCI products in their portfolio. Also, Yahoo has a similar ideology. They still don't have as much user-inclusion in their product developments. An acquaintance from Microsoft program management team for their search product explained me their process and I believe that they still need to allocate more time for the usability piece. However, to be fair - they are getting better!

Ray Ozzie has discovered that Google is way ahead and MSFT was left behind. However, he also respects them. At the same time, he is pushing his product dev team to get their act right with Live search product. He wants Microsoft back in this game. This market is going to double from USD 40b to USD 80b in 3 years. Microsoft cannot afford to stay back with a mere 5-8% market share.

One way to get back in the game is consolidating the smaller players. I foresee this consolidation happening. How - I dont know....! Let us say, what if the software giant makes a kill and buys out Yahoo? Picture this -

At today's price of 30-32 and outstanding shares of 1.34b, we get about 40b market-cap. If MSFT makes a bid of 20% higher, it will be about USD 48-50 b. MSFT can afford this purchase without any leverage - given their warchest of cash they've built up on their books. Besides, they needn't buy the whole pie; they can just buy a 51% stake at about USD 24 to 25 b. If they wait a bit, they can get it for cheaper as the stock market capitulates due to economic outlook - lol !

MSFT-Facebook romance is going on anyways. (Is this due to the Harvard connection???) So, MSFT will have a good usability team at hand and will be back in the game to take head on with GOOG. This wont be a serious threat to Google because the merger will be disruptive for both the companies from a talent perspective. However, this move will still strengthen Microsoft's position vis-a-vis Google and this move is the only way for Microsoft to get into this search arena, if they are serious about it.

Going back to the usability game, it is interesting to note that Govt of America has considered this seriously and has guidelines at usability.gov.

global sourcing

Mellon bank's senior officials visited CMU for a presentation on Global Sourcing. They wanted insights into what incremental innovations they can make in order to add productivity, security, performance, and nurture further relationships with their vendors, namely, CTS and INFY. The representatives from both CTS and Infy were present there. I had a talk with Ajay Bhandari, Sr. Engagement Manager from Infy thereafter on some other dimensions.

I could think of application of ATAM from SEI for architectural evaluation by Mellon and Octave from Cylab. Besides, all my productivity tips will go straight to their wiki and cannot be discussed any further. Its interesting to know that this was part of curriculum for a grad education program. Besides, the crowd also provide some other strategic insights for certain cultural aspects. I must appreciate the step forward from Mellon to place a Mellon personnel at offshore DC to be their eyes and ears for the sourcing initiative to be successful.

eSCM certifications are now happening both for service providers as well as clients. These are conducted by ITSqc or IT Services Qualifications Center. Global Sourcing is maturing to the next level. More on the topic later...

stalkerish..

This is stalking to the extreme !
Earlier, they wanted to know what everyone is searching for - now they wanna know the locations(lat/long coordinates).

Man, this is compromise of privacy - big time :) Ppl give up privacy for services they receive - not knowing what price they might pay for it later.
The recent one in stack is Google's Dodgeball

Is this Google's answer to 2 challenges:
1. orkut not being as popular/usable as facebook.
2. need to locate folks and provide advertisement possibilities to local businesses.

well, letsee wait-n-watch what happens !

which company is your favorite company?

Usually, many of my colleagues ask me this question: Which is your dream company?
My reply: my own company :D

They ask: Besides that?
My reply: From what perspective?

They ask: to work for...duh!
My reply: None

india business conference

Date: 2/16
Theme: Investing in India: An Entrepreneur's Canvas
Organized by: South Asian Business Association
Experience:

The event started off with a panel's meeting. Panel included CMU's Ashish Arora, Madan Mohan from Infosys, Rick Russow from USIBC, and some others.

Citi India portfolio owner for CitiCards managed his session over Webex as his flight from NYC got cancelled. CEO of iGate, Mr. Sunil Wadhwani had come down for one of the speeches. Besides, Rick had one speech as well. Rick is remarkably aware about India's political, economic, and cultural panorama(Of course, he had coffees with most of the bureaucrats including Montek Singh Ahluwalia and deals with bureaucrats in Tamil Nadu quite often!) Last speech was by Vish Mishra, from Clearstone Venture Capital. Clearstone invests in India-centric ventures (for instance, BillDesk)

In between, there were breaks with Indian foodstuff lined up (samosas, dhoklas, etc). I was unimpressed by CMU's Indian populace who didn't participate at this event ~ doesn't talk well about the entrepreneurial spirit of the community at the school.

spring courses

Technically, the school authorities call it the spring semester - I have no idea why - this cold is getting annoying - the temperature is 8F and feels like -2F. Man, that's -18C....! that's coooooooooollllllllddddddddddddd !

I wanted to write this post since a long time but either didn't have time or didn't have an inclination towards it. However, right now, I think I am over my writer's block period and can write ...and yo, I am back !

Macroeconomics

Prof Christopher Sleet has recommended the textbook of the most influential economist in the world - Mr. Ben Bernanke !I have the fifth edition but the professor insists on the sixth one which came out midway between the mini. However, this is a semester long course.

I am grasping some important macroeconomic concepts which help give an added dimension and credibility to any of my analysis.

Some of the CMU students are so impudent - they keep their feet on the bag! Check out the adjacent picture !

Business Law and Ethics

Course on Contracts by Ashish Arora was cancelled. That made me take this course and I am so glad I took it. Prof Dale Hershey has close to 40 years of experience practicing civil lawsuits. The book by Beatty Samuelson on Business Law is exhaustive and interesting at the same time.

This gives me a perspective on strategy analysis and also good amount of information required for a manager while making decisions and taking actions.

Contracts, Corporate structuring, intellectual property, cyber law, class actions, jurisdictions, shareholder rights, insider trading, antitrust, environmental law, consumer law, uniform commercial code (UCC), CISG, etc are the topics which are broadly well-covered in this mini-course.

On a sidebar, I met a bunch of first years (MBA) students in this class for our group presentation - all of them were caught up in a crazy chase for the internships .... 2 of the 4 I worked with got offers from Amazon which are freaking amazing offers :) One got from AT Kearney and one is still looking as she wants more !

Digital Transformation

Prof Ramayya Krishnan brings in some good models to think while making decisions w.r.t. IT and deployment of IT for strategic purposes. We mostly deal with IT user category of companies and not the creators.

However, I have a complaint: As participation has such a high grade component, in order to be fair to everyone, he gives way too much time to some of the folks in the class who crave attention. For instance, someone gives a long pregnant pause (just to get the footage) once s/he is given an opportunity to talk. Moreover, there are folks who bring in previous points while the discussion is in a specific flow (no matter how irrelevant they are to the current discussion). Then there's someone that takes at least 3 mins to describe the point s/he is trying to make.

I feel stuck in this class.... I didn't have a choice while taking this course as it has been made a capstone course which is compulsory. It must be dropped from the list of required courses - or must be allowed to be exempted if something similar is done. My strong opinions come from the fact that I had to miss the Capability Improvement for Service Organizations class due to time conflict with Digital Transformation. If DT wasn't a core course, I would've taken the Capability one !


Information Security and Risk Analysis

Interesting course with a great deal of insight in valuing risk. This is close to Options Pricing which I studied last semester. When I put up the point regarding security firms coming up with insurance for the clients w.r.t. managed security services, professor mentioned that there is lack of data. I could quickly correlate it to the fact that in case of stocks, there is second to second ticker data.

Prof Ashish Arora puts out the ideas really neat - these are useful for a consultant in general and a security department personnel in specific.

One of his TA Sasha Ramanov has a nice site which you can check out here. Another TA suggested me the WEIS 2007 event. I will try to make sure I am in Pgh around that time in order to attend it.

Lectures are conducted in Collaborative Innovation Center (CyLab hosts Google, Intel, etc offices here) for the infrastructure setup as the classes are being relayed to Kobe(Japan) as well.

Capstone project: Citigroup Corporate and Investment Banking
I can't write much about this as we have to protect the interests of our client.

In order to maximize the learning experience, our advisor Dave Burke has given roles to the folks who did not have experience in those areas. For instance, I have acquired knowledge on being an architect but never worked as an architect before - so, I was made the architect. Someone else hasn't done project management, so s/he took up prj mgr role and myself and someone else who has done it will guide him/her. This method has its own pros and cons.

All in all, a busy semester going on. I can manage to hit the gym several times a week and I am happy about that. Moreover, I am able to undertake other activities such as ice-skating, skiing, clubbing, latino dancing, etc in some free pockets of time.

Rendezvous with a Mayor!

Last night, at the PNC Park, I had an opportunity to meet the youngest Mayor in the United States Mr. Ravenstahl. He is young, dynamic, understands business terms and concepts well, and a visionary. He is fairly matured for his age and has the burning desire for turning around the City of Pittsburgh. Accordingly, he has taken steps at the micro-levels to work on converting the "Iron City" to a "Techno City". I wished him all the best in his endeavors when I met him and briefly introduced myself to him and where my origins are from (Mumbai).

After the Mayor's event followed the Network Pittsburgh event for Alumni networking. I met a few Deloitte folks out there and met some other interesting folks from the Heinz school who I had never met before. Nice event !

Post-networking meet, we went for the happy hour to Atria's to have some more meetings with the folks. Ron, our career services director, gave me compliment for being the "best dressed MISM" - so flattering ! Thank you Ron !

The travel back home was horrendous. My lips hurt due to the extreme cold weather in Pittsburgh. I didn't drive down to the event because I was planning on having some drinks. Hence, I had to use several connections of the bus routes to reach back home. One such link made me wait for half an hour and I think the temperature was -5 F. This coupled with the thin suit trousers sent shivers through my spine...literally ! It taught me a good lesson that I must never be out in the cold - no matter what my cold tolerance is.

social entrepreneurship

Jerr Boschee, the grand-daddy of social entrepreneurship had recently visited CMU. Received a lot of gyan from him on why SE ventures must make themselves self-sustaining and how to acheive that.

Moreover, he also mentioned that someone in this field, if in a dilemma (does it matter? types) can approach him for a discussion.

He had visited and taught students in India in the past ...after which he got this enlightment about devoting himself for a social cause - fairly noble person it appears.

ice skating

screeeeetch, whoooosh, whooop, THUD ...... are the sounds you easily get to listen at the ice rink if there is no music in the background. Yes, my first experience with ice-skating was yesterday evening. It reminded me of roller-blading days of 1995 !

Despite of few hurdles, a few MISM colleagues finally managed to reach the Schenley Park ice rink (on a lighter note, how many MISMs does it take to locate the rink ...LOL). While I was waiting at the rink, I saw quite a few kids doing nice maneuvers. As folks arrived and we tied our skates, we entered the rink with some apprehension. Some crashed at the beginning and some others as the time progressed.

Fortunately, I didn't fall in the first session. In the second session, in the last five minutes, I was stretching too far and my muscles had given up. I was unable to lift up my legs for the gliding action and hence, lost balance and fell. I crashed softly though and it was fun - no pains, no tears. The muscles of the lower back and the tendons of vastus medialis were screaming at me -

Manik Manik
Go away
Come again another day....
Little tendons want to lay !

When I learnt rollerblades, I had someone to teach me baby-steps with the skates on and then hold my hand for making a few rounds of the skating ring. I learnt faster that way. Yesterday was different as none of us were good at this though UD did well at the learning curve part - he was way ahead. However, I did have a bunch of folks who were constantly motivating me. Nah, not my colleagues, but a bunch of folks from UPitt who I met while tying up the shoes. Drea was one of them and she was half American and half Puerto Rican - very warm personality ! She was fascinated by Indian culture as well. I could never believe that she was skating for the first time because she was doing it so well!

All of us (MISMers) had decided that we shall have a look at the city from the point above the ice rink - however, that never happened ! A few other aspects ruined my mood towards the end of the event but that was fine - a part n parcel of this journey called life. After the skating event, I met some friends at Silkys and enjoyed some drinks with them for about a hour or more!

All in all, it was a good part of the weekend activity. Letsee whats lined up for today!

GramIT - phenomenal !

At the turn of the millennium, I asked KB Chandrashekhar aka Chandra, about when does he think that IT will become a part of India's GDP contribution and help at the grass-root levels. His reply was that when the jobs from all this IT boom in India reach the country-side, it will mark the significant contribution.

Seven years later, I read this news piece on GramIT. If offshoring is to remain India's growth engine, this must happen. Wage inflation and attrition at major centers such as Hyderabad, Bangalore, and Mumbai are causing huge problems on the supply side for the companies who are setting up shops in India. For GramIT employees, lack of other paying jobs make sure that currently, these are not the issues. With Indian service providers moving up the value chain, the lower end work can go to places such as GramIT.

I feel that this cartoon of outsourced CEO is exaggerated. However, moving up the value chain is so evident - few years ago, we could not imagine an Infy employee doing Application Management and yet, I was both, a Project Manager and Application Manager at AT&T. These are functions traditionally offered to US-based consolidated labor suppliers such as IBM, EDS, Accenture, Deloitte, etc Traditional model put virtual team mgrs with other vendors such as IBM. However, cos like Infy are invading this chain from right to left - right uptil client coordinator :)

Will this journey stop?

India has a significant challenge in maintaining its supremacy in being the preferred offshore destination. The offshoring industry is going to be 1.45 to 1.55million in strength and will contribute to about 7% of GDP by 2008 end. Challenges arise from the fact that clustering has happened during evolving stages at locations such as Hyd, Blore, Bbay, etc pushing the prices higher. This has caused huge internal competition within clusters and coupled with lack of supply (talented pool) has accentuated the problem. Let us look at the real numbers.

There are about 14m young grads in India with about 2.5m new ones getting added each year. However, only 10% are suited for the MNCs setting up shops. English skills remain a major issue. Bigger problem lies in the fact that Indian univs have varying quality of education. IITs and IIMs are world-class. However, the quality steeply declines as one goes into the second and the third tier institutions. The higher suitability figures lie in the engineering crowds - roughly 25% are suitable for MNCs. However, given the supply side constraints of engineering schools and huge demand in no. of IT workers and middle managers required, the wages are being pushed northwards. This is similar to demand for a stock in absence of floating stock and institutions placing huge orders.

Some doomsdayers say that Indian wages will get equated to US wages. This belief is misplaced. When the threshold of 30% of US wages will be crossed, Indian IT labor suppliers ( Infosys, TCS, Satyam, etc) will start looking in other low-wage labor supplying countries such as China. Infosys Shanghai already has already been set up and TCS has made several acquisitions in China. PRC provides cheap programmers but costly managers (with dual language skills) and hence, cost of team is the same at both the places in India and PRC. Suppliers are looking at Philipines as another destination for call centers as they have lesser Indian accents and can understand US accent with relative ease.

So what must GoI do?
---------------------------

Disperse the clustering

This is risk-diversification. GramIT is on right track - more such things must happen in India which will help both, Indian populace coupled with capitalists. More regions will get developed. Currently, due to origins of most of IT entrepreneurs being from Southern part of India, they are mostly concentrating in the South with Pune, Chennai, etc being the alternative destinations to avoid clustering issues. However, MNCs such as Accenture, IBM, et al have set up their shops there as well. So, cos such as Infy run to Kolkatta, Jaipur - nice solution :)

In order to enable this dispersion, government needs to focus on infrastructure such as airports, utilities, telecom network, etc. The effects of neglect by GoI in this matter have been benign so far but they will rapidly become a hindrance for the growth in next 3-5 years.

Airports
When interrogated about the bias for Chennai and other south Indian destinations, entrepreneurs mention that the infrastructure in other places is not as developed. For instance, Infy setup a shop at Chandigarh but there's no easy international airport access. Hence, government must focus on developing international airports fast. Jaipur is a good destination because of the international airport decision made in 2002 budget.

Telecom network
If telecom network is well developed then telecommuting can be started in India leading to easing pressures on wages. This will help dispersion of work in low-wage areas within the country. GramIT is the best example. Labor is available at $800 per head at less than 5% churnover rate- wow !

Utilities
Individual companies have been making sure that electric power, water, etc do not become an issue at their offshore development centers. For them, it makes business sense as economies of scale ensure lower marginal cost which they can pass on to the customer under component of reliability. However, GoI can provide this to the smaller startups who can compete far better. This takes us to the next aspect why should GoI support smaller ventures.

Showcase the depth and the breadth of Indian pool

India's talent pool can be showcased in other fields such as industrial R&D, Finance & Accounting (culture which invented zero man !), etc. Small ventures are starting in these arena and must be helped by GoI in various forms and they will reap the benefits of the same in next 5-10 years in form of higher $ revenues, money sent back by expats, etc. In order to scale up on manufacturing supply, we need roads, roads, and roads ! Bharat Forge is an innovative auto-component solutions provider helping companies from the developed nations become more competitive. I agree beating PRC is very difficult given the lead they have over India...however, its not impossible. PRC supplier rates are going up. India can become an alternate supplier location for competitive supply chains.

Brand India as a destination for alternative services. This includes wide range from medical tourism in Hinduja hospital in Mumbai to exotic Himalayas in the north and the healing Ayurveda destinations in Kerala. Our slogan must become:

What can Mr. Bharat do for you?

Besides, investment in educational infrastructure is required.

Private sector
Companies such as Infy, Wipro, TCS, etc must invest in educational centers. Profits seen today on a quarter to quarter basis will vanish soon if they remain myopic and do not address this 3-5 years pending issue. Their margins will be squeezed out if they dont invest in educational institutions which ensure a steady stream of good quality graduates. For this, both Indian as well as MNCs will have to form a consortium of sorts in order to invest together.

GoI
It can help setup an IIT in every state. Even if quality of existing grads is improved then the existing numbers will yield huge supply metrics which will satisfy demand of foreseeable future. India still remains a low-cost labor supply nation with cost of a grad being 12% of that of US grad and working hours being atleast 5% higher (2058 hours p.a. vis-a-vis 1900 p.a in US).

Bottomline: Collaborative execution committee between corporate world and govt is required which will yield results that can help country reach the BRICs dream drafted out by Goldman Sachs in y2k.

Ethics...

Check out what Bill and Warren mentioned at UNL.
This is a video on how they instill ethics in management under them.

winter break ends..

With the last week in the winter break, I want to blog the winter break experience. After the initial hedonism, I wanted to focus on family-time and health.

Bal, Val, and myself headed for a trip to Virginia beach in the week before Christmas to celebrate Christmas at Val's mom's place. On the trip, we once took an exit towards Williamsburg which has one of the oldest schools of US - College of William and Mary. On that night, we went for holiday lights at the beach front. The waiting line was quite long for the car-drive-thru but we were enjoying with christmas carols in the background. The best lightings were the ones towards the end - depicting the 12 days of Christmas.

Next day, myself and Val headed for the Virginia beach museum and I checked out some marine species out there. Touching a ray-fish with bare hands was the high point for that visit ! Later in the day, we forgot that the shops will get closed after 3:30 pm for Christmas eve and we were having difficulty finding a good place to eat. Finally, we got to eat at Val's favorite Mexican place. ....yummy salsa they had. The family spent the evening watching "walk the line." I watched it for the third time - but everytime I keep on finding something new in it. Well-made movie, I must say. I extended in the night to watch "Christmas with the Kranks."

On the day of Christmas, we all awaited the princess to come - Angelina - Val's niece. After she arrived later in the day, the gift exchange ritual started and undoubtedly the princess was the center of attention. I was in complete festive mood because the family provided me with such warmth, care, and hospitality. The gifts which Bal, Val, Val's mom and Val's sister gave me will go long way in helping a student like me :) Thank you for everything...it was so thoughtful of you guys!




When I went to bed that night, I had the glum feeling while thinking that this will all soon be over. However, I must say - I enjoyed every bit of it. Bal and Val have become like the bhaiyya and bhabhi I never had.

While we were returning back to Pittsburgh, I got to check out the downtown Va beach. Then we headed back - as we came - Bal driving all the way. IN between, we took a break at Tyson's corner - a bit before D.C. and Bal did some shopping there. Val ordered her Prada shoes on the phone to her Saks salesperson in downtown Pgh as we were not going to make it to Pgh by 7 pm in the evening.

We planned to hit the gym after coming back - unfortunately, gym was closed early that day. Val made nice pasta and beans (yummy thoe were - I got to get the seasonings recipe from her) and we watched a movie. Next day morning, I got up early to join Bal for the gym and then back to my routine I've been having.

The day before New Years was spent at their place as we worked towards getting down the tree which was put upstairs. Man, this tree was special - it had traditional ornaments and also, ornaments such as elephants - can you beat that? This year, she had 2 trees - one upstairs and one downstairs !

New Years was awesome - with friends at the Prive lounge. I did some shopping before heading for the New Year bash - bought some stuff for my younger bro during the after-Xmas sale. From 2nd Jan, I've been working on various projects (personal and professional) and this week the winter break ends - with good memories to treasure for long time to come :)

UK users gagging for IPTV

Check this out - this is just the beginning of the end for the cable folks .....as mentioned by the proponents of IPTV gang.

However, I feel that cable folks have some long way to go before giving up the battle. Comcast had taken up AT&T Broadband last year - and their results haven't been as impressive yet. Company has megalo-debt with it and it will take some time before they make themselves fit in order to compete. This keeps them on their toes at all the times in order to strive for the best. The consumers are the obvious ones to benefit due to this competition.

Stay hungry - stay foolish !

Apple Keynote Bloopers

Some funny clips of Steve Jobs and his gang over at Apple mssing up on their very important keynotes. ....so much for the ones who try to poke holes into Microsoft's imperfections ....

we play on a different ground

reading spree

I've been on a reading spree in the last few days and would like to share some of the highlights.

After I finished The Tao of Warren Buffett, I got onto the online video search for Warren Buffett - I didn't find very many videos but some interesting ones are posted on my bazaar blog.

The next one in line was My life as a quant. The book is a recommended reading for the Financial Engineers. Bernstein, Rubenstein, Taleeb, et al have all given good reviews for and the same. Mr. Derman is program director for MSFE program in Columbia these days and will shape the future of this field as he has in the last decade or so while at Goldman Sachs. His model was fairly popular. What drove me to read this book was the excellent class by Prof. Duane Seppi for Options.

Next one was 7 indicators that move the markets by Paul Kasriel and Keith Schap. That's a fine book and recommended for anyone trying to get the correlation of macros with the markets.

Besides, the reading on Strategy Power plays from Businessweek is enlightening. They havent been as good as HBR case studies, however, help me get updated on some of the fields that I wasn't as update.

While searching for tax-saving books, I had a glance at the book Financial guidebook - 9 steps to work by Suze Orman - which I will recommend to anyone seeking practical to-dos in order to lead a financially independent life. Most of us know most of the concepts she presents and yet ppl act contrary to the conventional wisdom. What I liked in particular about the book was her down-to-the-dirty-details approach and charts etc created for layman. For instance, she has mentioned a checklist of aspects to figure out what all to check while considering a credit card offer. Also, she has beautifully pounded on the idea that if you dont respect your money (by spending it too much) then you disrespect yourself. I like this lady as she gives practical advice and her show must be watched by everyone who feels they know very little about financial matters because she elicits it so well. I knew most of it but it is a sort of book which I will recommend folks who are trying to get in grips with that kind of information/knowledge.

A bunch of other books too - however, I left them mid-way either because the topics were not of my priority or because the content was not good enough.

Also, I read a bunch of other mags - Readers' digest, Scientific American, Scientific American Mind, some other health related reads. Apparently, USDA has changed the food pyramid this year from what it was in 2005- shifted focus from having lotssa carbs to having lotssa other nutrition. So, less pasta, bread, etc. Carbs were included in the pyramid at the base in 2005 when a major revision was done after the earlier revision in 1992. I read about some of the secrets to live longer:
1. Large number of anti-oxidants from veggies and/or fruits.
2. Croatian olives and oil used for cooking must be plant oils such as olive oil, soy oil, etc.
3. Eating a few 100 cals less per meal. This is inspired from Okinawans from Japan.
4. Red wine (frequency: 1 to 3 per week in less to moderate amounts).

Shall keep my blogreaders updated about the other reads which I may find interesting. I have CKPrahalad's residual reading next in my mind.