Vijay Mallya on a Roll

Vijay Mallya seems to be on a roll. The king of good times have bought 50% stake in the US Aircraft maker EPIC for about 50million US dollars. It is to be noted that recently he has bid for an Forumula 1 team. He is taking India places. Kudos!

First Hedging, Now Rupee Invoicing

For quite some time we all know that the Indian Rupee had been appreciating against the US Dollar. Most of the IT companies are billing their clients in US Dollars.

INR Vs US $

Because of this sudden appreciation of the Rupee against the US Dollar their profit margins are affected. No need to say investors aren't quite happy to see their EPS (Earnings per share) go down.

So companies first decided to hedge their earnings to avoid further losses due to an appreciating rupee. Since the Rupee would just stop appreciating, now these IT companies are now thinking of invoicing their long term client and business partners in INR (Indian Rupees). It is also noted that big companies will have the teeth and muscle with clients to push throught this, though small and medium companies will still find it hard to make this change.

Another interesting thing to note here is that, some companies having clients in the EURO region are billing them in stable European currencies (say the swiss franc). It should be interesting fact to see how far the Indian Rupee is accepted in the international market.

The rumour in bangalore is that some IT companies are planning for an 6day work week to increase productivity to offset the loss because of Rupee appreciation.

Meanwhile, Rupee Invoicing seems to be the norm now!!!

Vodafone's Tax Troubles

Vodafone recently acquired India's third largest telecom player Hutch. The income tax department of india states that, Vodafone has to pay tax around 2 billion dollars. But vodafone maintains that, it is Hutch who have to pay the tax. Lets wait and see who will have the last laugh in this matter.

BKC - new acronym for Bangaloreans to remember

BKC - Bidadi Knowledge City

Karnataka Government has approved DLF's proposed 9100 acre Bidadi Knowledge City(BKC). This is three times bigger than the DLF city near delhi. The another interesting aspect of this project is that it is closed to both the current and propsed new airports. This integrated city should be an attractive one for all IT Techies planning to setting in and around Bangalore.

Service Industry in India - Thru' my eyes - Part 1

This article is going to be about the first hand experience of an customer or subscriber to the various services that a common man will avail in his day-to-day life. Some of them are my very own experience and some others are going to my friends.

First off, i am going to start of this topic with one of my horrible experience in pizza hut (click here to locate Google maps).

Me and my friend went there and found ourselves an table(No one was at the door nor was there anyone to find us a table). After say 2 or 3 minutes one guy came to us gave the menu card and left.The table didn't even have a glass of water to quench our thirsts and there wasn't anyone available to contact too. Occasionally one guy was zipping through the tables and before you could blink he will go into the kitchen. After an horrible wait of say 10 to 15 minutes we managed to stop that guy to get us some water!!!

Another horrible thing was, it was the same guy who was opening the door, greeting customers, cleaning the table, filling water glasses, delivering orders and finally the bill too. Too much for one guy we thought so we patiently decided to wait for our turn to give out our orders.

It took another 20 to 30 minutes to get our orders delivered to our table. But the bad experience didn't stop here. The guy who took our order had actually forgot what pizzas we had ordered and came back to us to get it clarified, so we had to remind him of that. After being given our pizzas we were surprised to find that we had not been given sauce or spices to add flavor to our delicacies. we managed to find the spices from the nearest empty table but sauce was were no-where to be found. Almost all the bottles were empty, On enquiring about it we came to know there wasn't any available and we were instead give those small sample sauce sachet's.

Around this time most of the tables were full and some of them were uncleaned so some people had to turn back for the lack of tables and there wasn't anyone to find a table for them or to make them wait.

After finishing our we waited for the guy so that we could tell him to get us the bill, another 10 minutes passed by. He returned with the bill, we enquired to him about the shortage of people. He informed us that it is not that they are short of people but they all had gone for a birthday bash and taking a break. But as we were in a hurry we just paid in cash and left some tips for him and left the place immediately. Couldn't wait any longer at that place!!!!

Another Foot Note in this story :: While we were there, an foreigner came in and he was lucky to meet the only guy available as soon as he entered. He told the pizza hut guy that he wanted bottled water. But the pizza hut guy couldn't understand what he said so asked again. The foreigner (had a little thick accent) pointed to a water bottle on the table and said he wanted to two of them and also said he wanted them quick, He waited for two or three minutes no response. Another pizza hut guy came out to deliver some pizza's while he was returning back to the kitchen the foreigner went up to him and threw a Rs 100 note on his plate and said "If you are waiting for money, here is it.Bring it quick, Real quick!!!" Few more minutes passed by no reply. He almost walked into the kitchen and got his bottles and gave some tips to guy who delivered him and left the place in a hurry.

I guess this gives my readers an glimpse into the industry etiquette's and brand building what many of these organizations boast off. I completely give an hands down to this one. What impression are we making about India in that foreigner's mind? I leave it to your people to decide on what needs to be done. Leave me your comments! Part 2 is coming soon with my other horrendous experiences with Government Organizations.

Corporal Punishment

Corporal Punishment is still prevalent in many parts of India, this is the hard truth.
I can even call out some parents names who are ardent fans of corporal punishment. Their only way of seeing things is , when kids misbehave take the stick instead of finding out what the problem is and to try and solve it once for all.

Today i read an article about educating kids between 11 to 14 about the morality
of buying pirated CD's/DVD's . They wanted to make the kids realise that owning
pirated copies of CD's or DVD's are NOT a thing to brag about., they also want
to make sure that the student understand that, by buying pirated material
they are literally closing out the future of people who are looking
for an career in media and music industry.

I don't think such a think is possible by corporal punishment. We need to make an more holistic approach. Hope the teachers and parent who believe in corporal punishments understand this at the earliest for the benefit of our students.

More Telco's Coming IN - Part 2

October 1 being the last date for applying for UASL (Unified Access Services Licensing) for pan-India operations, DOT (Department of Telecommunications) have got 400 applications in all.

Almost all major Real Estate players(DLF,Omaxe etc.,) are in the fray.Probably to fight out for the virtual real estate. AT & T have lined with Mahindras for their second stint after leaving Indian Telecom market & IDEA cellular in 2004. Each of these players would require to pay 1500 crores as licensing fees once they got approval.

DOT is also in discussions with Defence Department for spectrum vacation, and they are also mulling for an seperate entity for spectrum allocation among the various players.

Why is there sudden rush? The mobile subscriber market is about to grow to 500million individual users. The potential market these many subscribers pose is humongous. Everybody wants to have a share of this huge pie.

I certainly love competition leading into so much of variety of plans and features.

With all this good information, we have another one too. Bharti Airtel have become the 10 largest Telecom operator in the world with around 50million customers. They are having big plans for future expansion,

• covering 96% of the Indian population.
• Launching IPTV in the near future.
• Mobile Gaming
• Voice Website (Under development.. R & D)
• Rolling out operations in Sri Lanka.

Finally branching out to Retail too, Time to rejoice for Bharti Investors.