Venkat's Weblog

Service-Profit Chain

Going through the HBR or the Harvard Business Review, I found some articles which were quite interesting and informative. Some of the simple rules that all of us are aware are reiterated and makes us to take a fresh look at the same, one such heading was the ‘Service-Profit chain’. The write up on ‘Optimization of Profitability Chain” is quite self explanatory. I am reproducing the same as below

"1. Internal Service Quality affect employee satisfaction
2. Employee satisfaction affects employee loyalty
3. Employee loyalty affects employee productivity
4. Employee productivity affects external service value
5. External service value affects customer satisfaction
6. customer satisfaction affects customer loyalty
7. Customer loyalty affects growth and profitability."

Quite brief and quite apparent but refreshing the most basic of principles is quite essential.

Source:-Best of HBR By James L. Heskett, Thomas O.Jones, Gary W. Loveman, W. Earl Sasser, JR., and Leonard A. Schlesinger

Voice Application

Heather Clancey’s write up on Mobility in the ‘Entrepreneur’ magazine was an interesting one. The topic was on ‘Voice Application’ and its future. Many find it quite useful especially while on the go and when people just seem to hate spending time SMS ing. So who are the companies who have discovered the potential of Voice Applications Clancey identified them as Jott Networks, Nuance and Vlingo who seem to be the front runner of ‘Speech Recognition Technology’. Jott Application helps in sending email and Memo by recognizing Voice Technology, sending email through the ‘Voice Technology’ with the help of Microsoft Outlook. Customers of Sprints use ‘Nuance Application’ which helps in ‘Internet Searches’, ‘Message Checking’ etc.

Quite Interesting actually!

Investments -India Vs. China

Red herring's Ken Schachter has written an article comparing the Venture Capital Investments in India and China. According to the article investments in China has gone up to more than 46% while in case of India it has dropped to around 81%. Accordingly investments were poured to the tune of $719 million into china which is a 46% increase than last year. Start up's in India got around $99 million in around 16deals which though might look like a good figure is actually around 27% decrease than last year. The area of investment in both the countries were consumer/business.
In case of China, the highest investment was in case of 'skyflying media' for outdoor advertsing. One trend which is quite surprising is that all investments seems to have made to already established or matured industries which seems to be making revenue or profit!

Guy Kawasaki does it again!

I was running through 'Red Herring' and Guy Kawasaki's new venture caught my attention. Might be an old news for you people but what amazed me was the budget that Guy had actually invested to start this new venture called as the 'Alltop', it cost him around $10,000 for the site, which includes the domain name, three Apple Laptops(of course it has to be Apple!) and developers expenses!

What does Alltop do, well as the name suggest it is a news site on the 40 most popular topics like celebrities, fashions, Mac etc. I went to the site to check it out:http://alltop.com - It was nothing flashy but a culmination of the hottest topic from about 40 to 80 sources (according to redherring!) which gets refreshed every 10 min! I did venture into sections like journalism and Mac. Under the Mac section i came across quite interesting heading like the 'Secret diary of Steve Jobs' and 'Macrumors'. It really is a conglomeration of the hottest and happening news, well Guy you have got a reader!

His early venture 'Truemors' encourages participants to submit news and rumors which are then ranked. Apparently Alltop is inspired by the traffic that Truemor and Popurls.com generated.

Dubbed as Apple's former Mega Evangelist, this entrepreneur and blogger never ceases to amaze me!

Kyte....flying high!

Mobile Social Networking! I felt it was the most obvious thing after Internet Social Networking, and I am all praise for Kyte to have realised the potential and to have started the Mobile Social networking site. It is known that online social network tops the chart, and Mobile Social Networking is yet to gain popularity; but neverthless the VC's seem to have full faith and have poured their resources. Hence it is of no surprise that Kyte after shortly announcing its first rounds of funding is ready for the second one and was sucessful in raising about $21.1 million with the help of Steamboat ventures and Intellect Capital Ventures.

Kyte is best known for its Music 'band' club, wherein a seperate channel is created for the bands and things like Photos, videos, blog are created for thier followers or fans. It actually works on the 'give n take' policy whereby fans get to enjoy exclusive articles, videos of their beloved band and in turn provide their databse for Kyte.

Let me not forget to mention that according to Red Herring the VC's who played a major part i.e Intellect Capital ventures, is the VC arm of Telia Sonera and Steamboat Ventures is associated with the Walt Disney Company.

Sell-In a unique way

Constant traveling, presentations and meetings especially in different continents of the world, does take its toll; And so here I am taking off for a few hours...........I guess. Well entrepreneurs are restless lot and I am no exception. I had to run through 'Entrepreneur' before my suggested sleeping schedule and here is what I liked.

It is an article from 'Entrepreneur' titled Sell by Barry Farber. Many of his observation did agree with mine and hence here are some views: One creates his own style of selling. There is no one way to do it or a single person from whom it can be imitated from. From past 25 years of his learning, Barry Farber feels that each seller has his own unique style and there is no one set way of doing it. I agree with it entirely, infact each situation is different and might demand a different way of selling than the other. He discusses the process in three words called CDC which is Collect, Discard and Create.

As very obvious 'Collect' is to be in a constant learning process where you can pick up a lot, especially when you see other successful people do their selling. It is important and inevitable to collect your information from the high quality stream of resources and people.

The Discard theory is quite obvious but very few adopt it. The art lies in to let go of things which are not useful to you. It is important to keep filling your head constantly with new things and discard those which you feel are old and stagnant.

To strive is to create one's own unique style of selling based on the knowledge which we have gathered. To keep reinventing oneself. Success lies in recreating and succeeding to the ever changing world of sales. These three theories need not necessarily attribute to 'Entrepreneurs' alone but to the thousands of individuals who have sales management and even personal goals.
The information present might be known to many, but it is important that one keeps in mind the three simple steps and pursues them.

Are you the Boss?

There is a huge transition from how 'Bosses' were expected to be about a generation ago and now. In the 50's and 60’s he was expected to be a 'Predominant' force in the workplace; for that matter even corporal punishments were common in schools. In his article love and fear in the modern Boss' by Scott. A Snook, analyses the transition that the definition of 'Boss' has undergone. I agree with Snook when he says that leaders in the present day are expected to show their softer side. This being the case many feel that fear is a necessary factor, as they would be more successful with a stronger boos, who has the ability to stretch them to their limit. Probably the saying 'performance under stress' holds good for such genre of people.
As rightly put leading the team by force and harshness has its own downsides and might not work eventually and similar is the case of Boss who are 'too soft' on the team. A right leader has to "read signals and adopt themselves accordingly".

Saying that, we need to accept the fact that good leaders are born anywhere and can be molded, the leader need not always be from the 'elite school' and only from the 'developed' nations; globally many have expanded their search for an able leader and I should say they have been quite successful in their search. Leadership qualities might be evident from birth and for some just the right opportunity and molding is necessary to reach the pinnacle.

'Leadership and Strategy'-Panel discussion by Don Moyer in 'Harvard Business Review' has observed that "when leaders fail to share their thoughts it leads to turmoil" open communication is the need for the day. Leaders should not feel restrained to communicate with their team; this is something I follow stringently with my team. Leaders should not feel that they are giving too much of unnecessary detail or content'. He also says that “A leader who can convey what he is thinking or feeling stands the best stand of all"
Another quote which I completely adhere to and encourage for others to follow are by Jim Collins and Jerry Parras in 'building your Company's vision' - "Passion, emotion and conviction are the essential parts of the vivid description that move people to action"
These are some ideologies and some facts that could turn the ordinary to extraordinary

Source: Harvard Business Review

All the best Jet Airways

In what can be considered as one of the most important move in the history of Aviation, Jet Airways has approached BMI (British Midland Airways Ltd.), Chairman Michel Bishop for a potential buy of his stake in the company. Sir Michel Bishop owns 50 percent plus one share of the company. The other Airline which has shown interest is that of Virgin. As most of us know Jet Airways has recently added 'London' on its destination list and this deal does have a great significance to the company. Another piece of news is that on winning the stake, Jet Airways not only gets slots in the 'Heathrow' but is also in line for Staralliance.

I do wish all the very best to Mr. Naresh Goyal and his team on this pursuit. This deal would definitely put the 'fastest growing passenger carrier' once again on the Global Map.

Much awaited Mac World

With the ending of the CES show in Las Vegas, many are awaiting the Mac world shown in San Francisco. surprise is the key element that Steve Jobbs puts into the show. Many do not know the details of the new product unveiling that hapens during the Mac World shows and many willingly participate in the 'guess' job that happens during this time. The only thing that people agree during the show is that Notebooks are the strong point of Apple and this show is all about releasing the new Ultra Slim laptop. The other release is that of 'online Video Rentals';the download is done through iTune and from various sources like Fox, Warner Bros.

On the stock side the recession news did bring the price sliding down. As you all remember Apple did touch the $200 mark during December. But with the onset of the Mac world the price increased around 4.8% to touch $179.40. Well product lines and especially Notebooks are the strong points of Apple and I am sure Jobbs would exploit the popularity that they have created among the Mac followers.

TiE Entrepreneurial Summit 2007

TiE Entrepreneurial Summit 2007

Though I missed the first day of the Summit, I was lucky enough to catch the rest of the Summit and it made up for the loss. On Day 2, C.K. Prahalad’s Keynote Address on ‘Entrepreneurship-Essence of Development’. Mr. Prahalad spoke on development of India, and strived to find answers for questions like ‘How to develop India?’ on the subject of ‘economic development’ he said that solutions to the answers lied well within the society itself and took the example of ‘AMUL’ movement, which not only about ‘Milk Revolution’ in the society but also led to upliftment of the society itself.

Mr. Prahalad spoke my mind when he said that the answer to many problems in the society does not lie in providing employment, but by creating Small and Medium Entrepreneurs who could exist within their surrounding itself and don’t find the need to shift base and this in turn would help in solving problems like that of Urbanization. Mr. Prahald also stressed the need and the importance of education saying that the society could change for better only through education. I could so much relate to his speech as I could relate this to ‘Great Indian Dream.Org’.

The other eminent personalities who chaired the Summit were Mr. P. Chidambaram-Hon. Finance Minister,Ms. Rama Bijapurkar-Strategic Marketing Consulting, Mr. Kris Gopalakrishnan-CEO and Managing Director, Infosys Technologies, Shekher Gupta-Group CEO Indian Express Group, Russell Parera-CEO, KPMG India.

After the first session was over, it was time for some socializing and networking, which lead to a lot of interactive sessions with eminent VC’s and fellow entrepreneurs to share ideas, and was aware of the presence of many angel investors. On our Part we Stressed and showcased the Platform on which Market Simplified was built, this I must say was very well received.

Coming back to the Session I was quite impressed by the Speech of Mr. Gopalswamy, the Chief Election Commissioner on entrepreneurship.

Some of the most impressive session were ‘Small is Big’ by the Keynote Power Panel which consisted of dignitaries like V. Vaidyanatha- ICICI Bank, Sanjeev Bikhchandani-Naukri.com, Balram Garg-P.C. Jewelers, Sanjeev Narula-Lilliput, S.K. Jindal-Jindal Dyechem. Another session which I could relate to was the ‘Scaling Up’ session held on the Second Day of the session.

With such eminent dignitaries and powerful speeches it is hard not to get influenced and relate ourselves to those present in the Summit. The Summit on a whole was a successful affair for both the Organizers and for Entrepreneurs like me.