Random Observations

Travelled in the rush hour by a local train today and tomorrow and was surprised to see people say Ganpati Bappa Morya just as the train leaves. Though taking Ganesh's name at the beginning of any work is considered auspicious, I guess it was more out of the fear and they took God's name to pray for their safe return back home in the evening.

At Andheri Agarkar chowk, I observed that for boarding the same bus, there were two queues - One for people wishing to sit and the other one for people wishing to stand. This was something unique not seen before by me.

A little patience and tactic can help you get a seat in bus/train even on the week days in the morning.

Saw that people trvelling together everyday who had become train friends celebrating birthday on a local train and distributing sweets to everyone around - Something to cheer for in the packed train compartment.

Vodafone has the worst possible customer care support system in mumbai. The customer care representatives (and gallery people for that matter) do not have access to the call history of numbers from outside mumbai. - wonder why it is gaining market share.

A different life altogether

Long away from the hustle and bustle of cities, in small towns and villages, lie the manufacturing units of most of the product based companies which account for the basic source of revenue for these companies. The lives of people working at these manufacturing units is competely different than that of those working at their respective head offices.
I have been to such factories for quite a lot of times but a recent visit to a chemical plant (& stay there for around 4 days) last week has made me appreciate the contrasting nature of lives of people working - not financially but in other terms. Financially, in fact, plant officials are adequately paid so as to retain them.

A weeks' at the rural location made me appreciate nature and its beauty. With the travelling time from home to office cut down from 2 hrs to 5 minutes, I suddenly had a lot of spare time after working hours. I could now read books, surf the internet, learn stock market investing tricks or think about starting a new business.
I, however, did neither and spent the free time talking to a colleague, watching television and sleeping more than required. The point is that we could get time to think about other things.

Here, life revloves around the shifts at the factory. People have to plan everything w.r.t their shifts in the factory. Odd meal hours, odd sleep hours, etc form part of the routine. Enjoying power naps during the night shift, bitching about work (not) done by previous shift people, delaying work so that work can be transferred to people of the next shift, forming friends who would cover each other during absence, etc are some of the joys while working specially in production.
Here, people get to spend a lot of free time with family, bond with like-minded individuals and develop long-term friendships. Things like respect for elders, respect to seniors, etc automatically fall into the culture because of the discipline there. A lovely world of its own really.

However, this may be true and be good for people in their late 40s, young people taking up jobs at factory locations end up being frustrated - partly because of the isolaion from major cities, partly because of pollution and partly beacause of the same mundane routine life. Also the fact that factory individuals take more time to reach the top as compared to those at offices adds to their discontent. I talked to a couple of newly joined youngsters when I realized that they were quite discontented and wanted to make it to an urban place asap.

As for me, I got a chance to interact with a lot of people, a chance to spend sometime all alone, a chance to see houses at Konkan and a chance to see another chemical plant.
While going to the plant, my senior mentioned "jis chiz ko hume beenchna hain woh kaise banti hain jaao dekh aao" which reminds me of the dialogue from the movie Lakshya "Jis chiz ki hum raksha kaar rahe hain, jaao dekh aao".

P.S. Frankly, as I mentioned that I was from Sangli, people started becoming friendlier and things started becoming less formal from that point onwards. There's certainly a charm about my lovely city :P

first post using mobile

This is my first post using newly bought smartphone. I have now finally started travelling up the technology ladder. Still I am a long way to be called tech-savy. Yet, it feels great multi-tasking on this phone.                                                                       I am currently on a vacation. It is the first time in 8 years that I am at my home at Sangli for such a long time. I had the television all to myself this time and I had all the time to watch the different news channels being aired 24x7.                                              I was taken aback by the common nature of news running across all the general news channels. Even the timings of special shows were the same. So, at any time, one could get similar kind of news across all channels or special shows like maut ka saugadar, katil kaon, etc. There is no differentiation in the product offered. Even the english general news channels were the same. The only exception being the business news channels where each channel recommended different companies to invest depending on the money offered to them.Aaj tak has maintained its uniqueness by the absurd nature of news aired. However, channels like india tv, star news are fast catching up w.r.t absurdness. Aaj tak needs to make up more strange news to maintain its market leadership in the news market.Really the news channels have become more of sensation generation now. DD news being the lone exception where news are really relevant and to the point.                                   As rightly said by prominent people like Pritish Nandy, Aamir Khan, Rajdeepsardesai, etc the I too observed that the life of a particular news has shortened. E.g: the almost uprising on account of the LokPal bill was no longer discussed 2 days after the leader, Hazare, broke his hunger strike.         I do realize that i am not making any sense in this post, but this qwerty keypad is really convenient to use making me type more.̉

Tatas - Great brand makers

I have always admired the Tatas. They are truly the only Indian corporate to be truly global in nature. Recently, the Tata brand was selected as the third most trusted brand across the globe.

While I applaud the management at the group to run the whole empire smoothly and responsibly, what I have come to observe off late is that it is the marketing aspect of the group which makes it stand apart from others.
The Tatas have been great at identifying the product differentiators and have been able to come up with simple yet great methods to communicate it to the people - especially in businesses where the product is sold directly to the consumers. Tatas have always been able to come up with products with some unique point(s) directly relevant to the Indian audience. At times, their point of differentiation is so appealing and so effectively communicated that inspite of the product being mediocre, the Tatas have been able to get good sales. I would like to mention some of their products:


1.  Tata DoCoMo: Being one of the last ones to enter the Indian GSM telecom network, it needed something great to penetrate the already clogged telecom market. The product was the same yet their strategy of charging 1 paise per second and effectively implemented advertising campaign made the whole market change their pricing strategies. That no doubt led to a price war but the brand was effectively reinforced amongst the mass audience.
Similar thing has now been done again by the Tatas. Instead of talking of their product, it has now come up with a simple strategy to be emphatic to the audience towards the customer care related issues. This point of differentiation though common was not taken up by anyone and Tatas have effectively, yet again , been able to communicate these to the audience through the Ranbir Kapoor stand-up comedy campaign. Simple but highly effective.

2.  Tata Nano : Branded as the cheapest car in the world and endorsed by none other than Ratan Tata himself, this differentiation (of being cheapest) has stayed with the audience inspite of very little promotion effort by the company. The awe generated during launch was more than sufficient to leave a mark upon the audience.

3. Tata Salt: The old campaign of the Tatas of having Iodine as the differentiating factor was again very effective to build the brand image. So, even in a simple and a pretty undistinguished product like salt, the tatas came up with a good distinguishing factor.

4. Tata Swach : Here, they used the trust commanded by brand name Tata as the point of distinction used very effectively to compete with the network of HUL (Pureit).

Thus, while their products may sometimes not be with great features, I feel that it is their marketing effort that really sets Tatas apart. They are able to know the Indian audience very well and develop strategies that effectively identifies a point of distinction relevant to the masses and communicate it to them. Thus, marketing has been one of the most important pillars on which the success of Tatas can be attributed to. 

Highway Driving

I have always loved driving on the highways, specially on the highways from Sangli where we have the opportunity to drive along 2 way highway and also a one way highway of the golden quadrilateral.
The thrill of driving at high speeds, the fun to overtake vehicles, the excitement of racing with other cars, etc are some of the things which we cannot experience elsewhere.
At present, as a part of golden quadrilateral and other porjects, most of the national highways have been or are being converted to one way 4 or 6 lane highways, way too big as compared to the previous 2 lane, 2 ways roads. While, these one way roads have been able to decrease the average travel time, increase the safety levels, while driving on a small patch of the national highway today, I felt that the excitement of driving was missing. I feel that driving on these one-way highways has made driving a lot monotonous. We generally drive in one lane and be in the same lane as long as we do not need to overtake anybody. There is no body coming from the opposite side. We only care about overtaking cars and not worry about anyone from the opposite direction. We mainly focus on the cars coming from behind while keeping a safe distance from cars in front. Thats it. So, it creates a monotony - specially for someone with Maruti or Alto which cannot compete with high powered small vehicles. (Baas ek lane pakad ke go on).
In the 2 way roads, we had to concentrate on cars coming from behind, the car in front of us and also on the cars coming from the opposite direction. Here, overtaking is far riskier and requires a lot of  judgement with regards to the speed of the vehicle in front and also of the speed of any vehicle coming from opposite direction. The thrill of making it to our lane just in time after an overtake is an experience in itself. (Its risky but always need to maintain a safe distance). Today, while driving on the 2 way road from Kolhapur to Sangli, I thought of these things (and many more)

While the above is a completely personal opinion, I feel that driving on a highway has a lot of advantages and we can learn quite a lot. Some of the things which I feel we can learn are:

1. Concentration: I feel driving is a great way to improve concentration levels since we need to focus on a lot while driving specially on 2 way highways. You cannot let your mind wonder off even at slower speeds. A good mind exercise I should say to stay alert all the time.

2. Leveller : The highway acts as a great leveller for all vehicles. We do not know who will drive in what manner and so we need to treat everyone equally and as such acts as a good leveller.

3. Judgement : Driving helps us develop judgemental skills. Gets developed slowly and steadily.

4. Knowing when to call it quits : A highway offers huge scope for speeding cars. It depends on the individual to decide to what speed he will go before he calls it quits. So, in a way highway helps to see the risk apetite of an individual too. Not only the speed aspect, the way in which a person overtakes other vehicles says a lot about the risk taking ability of the driver.


5. Know your strengths/skills before jumping - A highway teaches us to first know our own strengths and capacities before competing. A Maruti 800 cannot compete with BMWs on a highway. We need to understand our limitations and decide our path accordingly.

6. Never underestimate small players: Most of the accidents on highways happen due to 2-wheelers on the highways. 2 - wheelers overtake from the left side, occupy a whole lane and hence are the cause of majority of the accidents on highways (after of course tractors :P). While driving, we need to tackle these 2-wheelers smartly. We can never underestimate these 2 wheelers. They are bound to raise troubles when we overtake if we ignore them like nobody.

 In addition to these things, at the stops at small dhabas we make on highways for meals, we can learn a great deal about the lives of drivers, the way they protect their consignments at night, the pressures they face due to the rising costs, etc. Such talks are really insightful, especially for a marketeer.

I wish all drivers a safe and a cautious journey and follow all the journey rules.

Irritation

I am a bit irritated today - Partly because today things did not go the way I planned and partly because of the slow pace at which things have been progressing at my end. This reminds me of an interesting incident I encountered.

A Punjabi man entered the cabin. Without any introduction, he sat on a chair opposite the person in charge and beside me. He looked like a well-informed person and a well-networked individual. After asking the hal-chal of the person in charge, the man started talking about the India-Pakistan match which is supposed to take place in a couple of days at Mohali. He looked very passionate about cricket and at length started discussing about the weaknesses of the teams and other stuff which appeared in the morning newspaper (Hindustan Times to be precise). He talked about the security arrangements and the possible outcomes of the PM meet at the stadium. Then he completely started showing off by talking about some influential in the Income Tax department at Pune. Then after some discussions about the upcoming courses at my institute, he left. The total time he talked was around 20 minutes. As soon as he left, the person in charge of the office asked me "Ye kaon tha?". I had no idea about the person and we had a big laugh. 20 minutes in the conversation and there was no introduction from his side. The person in charge also didn't bother to ask since there was no value addition from the conversation. Such an irritation.

This is just one of the many experiences I've had when the person who starts the conversation doesn't introduce himself. I have encountered a lot of such calls where the person calling assumes that I have his/her number and goes on with a general conversation (where we don't need to know specific things) for minutes together. After the initial 30 seconds into the general topic conversation, it also becomes awkward to ask him his name. So, we let the conversation drag on without knowing whom we are talking to.

A remedy to such an irritating experience is that we need to be wise enough to ask his name before getting into the conversation.
Moral of the story : Please introduce yourself when you talk to a person at a high post or when you talk over the phone.

Journey conversation and thought

It has been quite sometime I've posted something on the blog. My laziness, the mess I've subjected myself to, the vast number of scams (reading which I consume most of my online time), and the facebook are some of the reasons for it. 

So, I was travelling from Pune to Sangli via a non-stop bus (glad to get it as soon as  I reached bus stop) and I had a young farmer as my fellow passenger. After the initial hour, which I spend sleeping and smsing, we began talking. I don’t know why every conversation with an unknown Maharashtrian begins with the place one hails from and this was no exception. Even before we exchanged our names, we exchanged our hometowns and current location. After the initial discussions about the places around Karad and Sangli, the conversation went to farming.

Here, I was astonished with the knowledge level of the person. He explained me the different techniques of sowing sugarcane seeds which improved the yield levels of the sugarcane production per hectare, the two methods by which the fertilizers should be put on plants and the use of new concentrates which will yield more crop per hectare land. I knew about these things only superficially but thanks to this young individual, I think I have a better insight on this subject now.

The conversation then went to multi-level marketing and Amway when I saw a spark in his eye. He had been waiting for this opportunity and he started with the multi-level marketing concepts, the royalty concept and other things which Amway is known for. The passion with which he felt Amway will be a successful FMCG (which Is no doubt the fastest growing FMCG company currently) and the level of enthusiasm he shared was really contagious. I, personally, am not a big fan of multilevel marketing and Amway. I feel that the products are unnecessarily expensive and are dumped on to an individual to sell. When I explained him my reservations against this concept, he reluctantly agreed and  told me that he spent only 2 hours of his leisure time for Amway daily and he invested a low level of capital in it. He showed me detailed calculations which showed a revenue of Rs. 5 lakhs per month + some 4% royalty in case he convinced 25 people to join Amway and told that it was always worth a risk to try out for such awesome levels of returns.

He then went about describing that agriculture will only take him to a particular level and to rise from mediocre to higher, he needed to do something additional and he found Amway as a best way to take him to that level.

Though I do not approve of Amyay, I was really impressed by his thought of doing something to rise from the ordinary to the extra-ordinary. Hope that others also think along the same lines and find out different ways to rise out of the ordinary. If only that happens, India will scale new heights.

However, reasonable levels of risk (not too high risks) should be taken. Else things could go wrong like in my case. :P

On Hostel Mess

If you talk to any person who has ever stayed in a hostel, 'mess' is a dreaded word. I am yet to see any person who says that he/she had good food at the mess during his school/college days. The Roti at any mess appears uncooked, there is always a significant amount of oil floating on the top of any vegetable, the dal always tastes bad and so on are some of the common complaints at most of the mess. In context of food, the word mess originates from some Italian word which refers to course of a meal put on table. However, we relate this word to the general meaning of mess i.e. chaos or confusion. The food over there is considered to be in a mess.

I've been living in hostel for quite sometime now and while I feel the same about the food many times, I sometime wonder about the possibility of making quality and tasty food for around 1000 thankless people everyday round the year. I feel that it is really a tough job to keep so many people happy every time.
I've concluded that because the food gets repeated after every 15-20 days; even though the food is good, people tend to get bored with the repetitive stuff and then start to complain about the food. Well, this cannot be helped then.

Apart from the food aspect of the mess, when I think of the mess, I remember the words of one of my professors (Man!. look at the number of degrees. A line isn't sufficient). He says that the mess is a 'great leveller'. No matter what the family background of a student is, he has to sit in the mess and consume food prepared by the cook. A great line of thought I should say, especially after this incident : P

For me, I have always considered mess as a great place to socialize. After from my room and the classes, the cumulative time I've spent in the mess has been the highest. I've had some of my most engaging conversations at the mess. I have started talking to a lot of people at UICT and SCMHRD because of the mess. Some of the people whom I first talked to in the mess are now some of my good friends. I've come to observe some of the most peculiar aspects about humans and human behaviours at the mess when I see future managers talking to the mess employees.

Thoda senti ho gaya w.r.t mess. Hope I am able to fast recover from the mess I've subjected myself to.