Person of the year

It is that time of the year again; the nominations for the who’s who of the year. While the general public have their Rahul Dravids and Sania Mirzas, the corporate world has it’s own heroes of the year. While you see familiar faces in the top ranking list, Economic Times has named Abhishek as the personality that best represents a bullish Indian economy!

While you are wondering how he is really connected to the business world, we shall get into the serious part of analysing Economic Times’ list of India’s Most Powerful CEOs. I really don’t know when our media will get tired of Narayana Murthy, but yes, it’s him again as the top rank CEO. But since he is actually the non-executive Chief Mentor, we have Nandan Nilekani coming in at No.6. Azim Premji comes in at No.5 and if you count our beloved Vijay Mallya as a Bangalorean, then we have four Bangalorean CEOs on the top ten.

But the surprise entry is Capt.Gopinath at No.19. Obviously he has shaken up the airlines sector with the low cost concept; Among the very few women in the top 100, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw is ranked at No.23, down from her 13th rank in 2004. As usual high expectations on her company stock took the toll on her ranking. Next comes the mysterious CEO of Britannia, Vinita Bali who has very well managed to keep away from the media spotlight. The last Bangalorean is Jerry Rao, listed at No.95. This is a huge fall from 2004’s 52nd ranking for this poster boy of the IT industry. The problems at Mphasis and Msource have seriously dented his image. But overall, eight Bangaloreans in the top 100 is surely a good sign for the so-called crumbling IT capital!

Coffee connection

Everyone in retailing is quite curious about Starbucks’ interest in India. For dummies, Starbucks is the world’s largest coffee café chain, which has now entered Asian markets. So when are they planning to enter India? In fact, I have some insider info that it will take a long time for them. Reason… real estate prices, of course.

The two coffee chains, Barista and Café Coffee Day found it difficult to get good locations at viable prices. This was a few years ago when the Indian market had not yet become over-heated. Then in a decent metro residential locality the cost was Rs.40 lakh, while it was Rs.50 lakh in commercial places! (2002-03) But one thing would be cheap for them in India, that is sourcing coffee!

Meanwhile, as per The Global Competitiveness Report 2005-2006, released last week by the World Economic Forum, Finland remains the most competitive economy in the world. It tops the rankings for the third consecutive year, while the United States is in second position, followed by Sweden, Denmark, Taiwan and Singapore, respectively. Thankfully India has improved its ranking to 50 from 55.

An interesting point is, the Nordic countries continue to hold prominent positions in the rankings, with Finland (1), Sweden (3), Denmark (4), Iceland (7) and Norway (9). Isn’t it strange that these are the countries with the highest per capita coffee consumption, Internet connection and mobile usage… so is the world moving towards doing business in a nearby café culture…

Processing a Paradigm shift

How would we measure the level of computer performance… processor clock speed, of course. Although so many elements go into a standard desktop PC, masses know only the processor, Intel Pentium 4, Celeron 1.4GHz, AMD Athlon 64 bit, etc. But the truth is that megahertz or gigahertz, speed doesn’t matter for CPU performance.

Intel was quite reluctant in accepting this fact and AMD foolishly went on fighting its bigger rival on this point.

Despite extensive coverage by the tech media that showed better benchmark performance by slower-speed AMD Athlon 64 processors, AMD itself didn’t realize this golden opportunity to tell a different story to the consumers. Meanwhile, if processor speed no longer defines the processor technology, then what does? Intel’s own corporate culture probably needs a major adjustment in perspective and its marketing department has a great challenge in doing this paradigm shift!

Multi-core processing is being upheld as the innovative ideal, and the new race, as defined by Intel, is to go multi-core everywhere as quickly as possible. This topic dominated much of the discussion at the Intel Developer Forum held in city recently.

The technological challenge in achieving higher processor speed is the heat generated by Intel’s 3 GHz clock Prescott-core P4s. There was a major concern in the industry circles due to the high cost in cooling, electricity consumption and noise.

The Indian MNCs

I had been to Sri Lanka recently which is at a crucial juncture of its history now. Presidential elections were held after the ceasefire was declared on the civil war in 2001. The media is full of reports about claims and promises of the incumbent President who is again playing on the hopes of Lankans.

On the business front, India is written large on everyone’s minds. The FM radio is full of ads of Indian products; (by the way, Santosh Gnanakan or Saggy-the ex-RJ of Bangalore now works for an FM radio in Colombo!) Roads are full of Bajaj Autos, TVS bikes and Maruti cars fighting it out with Toyotas, Mitsubishis and Nissans. Even the food is heavily influenced by Indian cuisine. When I was there in Colombo, CII was hosting a Made-in-India trade show to display some innovative products from here.

Throughout the early days of liberalization, our beloved communists were screaming that the western MNCs would take over Indian market. If you see the Sri Lankan market, it seems like Indian products are competing very well with a western product. For a Nissan Sunny, there is Tata Indigo, for an Isuzu truck, there is an Ashok Leyland, for a Caltex, there is IOC, for a KFC, there is a Bombay Sweets too!

So let’s stop this MNC scare at least now and start thinking about how to compete with them. Rarely have we seen a good quality product killed by an onslaught of a bad MNC product. Do you remember tasting Campa Cola two decades ago

Levin Lawrence is a consulting correspondent for businessgyan

Issue BG58 Jan06

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