Showing posts with label policy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label policy. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 08, 2008

...truly world class? forex prudence is missing...

For Indian service providers to become truly world class, they will need to spend on in-house forex talent. Check out this case where the story suggests "Nishar said that company does not have have any in house expertise to enter into forex deals." from the cnbc article.

This indicates low risk-management maturity of the vendor. If the earnings are in USD and costs are in INR then one cannot ignore forex. In the past, I had blogged about how Infy couldn't manage its forex here.

I extend this hypothesis of managing forex better to any Indian exporter. If you want to have a sustainable business in a global economy, you must have economists and forex specialists at your disposal.

Business case for forex specialists?
Now, in case of Hexaware, Nishar can argue that he cannot afford to have a full-time position for just forex as Hexaware is relatively small. This observation leads to business-case for forex consultants. I am not talking about forex-agents, who sometimes claim to be forex consultants. I am talking about hardcore economists or forex specialists.

Govt intervention?
For India to be truly world class with the nature of companies it is coming out with, GoI policies need to incentivize forex education initially. Traditionally, everyone has been focussed on engineering and medical to such an extent that there is huge dearth of these other functions' personnel.

Saturday, February 03, 2007

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.