A Lot of Hot Air

Recently I had been to a workshop on Clean Development Mechanism in power generation and transport organised by The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI). There were serious deliberations about the arrival of Kyoto Protocol and impending carbon trading where developed world will pay for renewable energy projects to the developing countries. It was stated that India, despite all its shortcomings in other industry sectors, has been the leader in implementing renewable energy projects like wind, biogas, biodiesel, mini-hydel and solar power.

On my way back I was pondering over these issues while I was stuck in yet another traffic jam. But this time it was different. Numerous autorickshaw waiting for filling up gas on Residency Road, had jammed up the junction. The issue is simple; despite ONGCies and Reliances exploring trillions of gas reserves, the supply at the retail end is just a trickle. While the common man is willingly taking up eco-friendly fuel, there is nobody to supply! Is our beloved government waiting for the New Delhi kind of crisis where the public transport came to a stand still in 2001 due to the lack of CNG gas supply…?

Big news in HR

Hema Ravichander, the global head of human resources at software major Infosys Technologies Ltd, has quit. “I am currently exploring various options including consultancy opportunities in the human capital management space,” Hema told Business Line. In a study conducted by Business Today in 2002, she was identified as one of India’s top 25 young executives: the only woman to figure in that list. Last year, Dataquest selected Hema as one of the six IT Superwomen.

I wonder who will take over from Hema. Looks like she’s fixed on the consulting option. It can create big news if she joins one of the big HR consulting firms in India. Will it be Hewitt, Watson Wyatt or a home grown consulting firm like GrowTalent or ECS? This reminds me that The Hay Group is still headless in India!

Posted by Gautam Ghosh

Learning Incubator!

Recently I was called for a power lunch by Prof. Sudhakar of who wanted me to meet Vinay Nadig who is a corporate training consultant. Vinay had just come back from the US and is about to set up a new corporate training firm called Learning Beam. The marketplace is full of such soft skills trainers who compete with each other in the lucrative IT/BPO space. I asked him why enter such a market, and his answer was, “we focus on non-IT sectors like hospitality, retail, manufacturing, etc.”

Rarely do we find a training firm focussing on these not-so-lucrative sectors. Most of the existing training firms have repetitive modules with a standard set of soft skills. How does Learning Beam differ…? Vinay said, “Traditionally employees had been forced to attend a multitude of seminars conducted by self styled experts. The focus is more on the personality of the trainer rather than the content. We believe that learning, rather than training should be the focus. We will use the DiSC model – a behavioural self-discovery model founded by a renowned psychologist. Its an online discovery model to enable learners to assess their workplace behaviour.”

Just when I was thinking that this is yet another jargon-heavy management theory which will drown the participants, he pulled out the trump card. “We are hosting these training sessions as public seminars rather than in-house corporate training. So a retail sales manager could be interacting with an IT quality manager in a public space. Based on the results of these seminars, we plan to open a ‘Learning Center’ in Bangalore– a state of the art learning facility to which we will invite our corporate clients to use it as a learning incubator for their employees at all levels. Learning Incubator... interesting! For more details, visit www.learningbeam.com.

The end of an era

A visit to Mysore bought my student day photography nostalgia back. As I revisited our favourite haunts I asked about Shetty Photographics, where we purchased our Black & White prints. I was surprised to know the place had closed down, and on enquiry learned that their main business of recopying and restoring old photos was hit by digital image processing. Now days computers can do miracles in restoring old photos and obviously Shetty’s B&W recopy work couldn’t stand up to them. Most of my photographic friends are still using Nikons and Pentaxes, but are eager to move onto to digital cameras.

Looking at this micro picture of a small town photo business getting affected by advancing technology, I realised the impact on the big players like Kodak. Recently Eastman Kodak Co. announced cutting 10,000 more jobs as the company navigates through a tough transition from film to digital photography. It had earlier targeted 12,000 to 15,000 job cuts by 2007, but made this shock announcement as it swung to a disappointing loss for the second quarter in a row.

Kodak’s film business has been on the wane for more than a decade, its decline quickened in the 21st century by film free digital cameras. Analysts say Kodak was slow to get into digital photography and without a swift conversion, risks fading into history. Digital accounted for around $5.5 billion of sales in 2004, but will vault as high as $8 billion this year, said Kodak. Chemical-based businesses will account for around $6.6 billion, down from $8 billion in 2004. In 2003, digital cameras began outselling traditional film cameras for the first time in the United States.

Issue BG53 Aug05

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