Working in India

Was recently asked by colleagues in office to share how my London experience has been. The more time I spend thinking about it, the longer the list gets. So what really is different?

Differences abound. But can be categorised along the following lines

1. Differences in the market
2. Different work practises
3. Different culture
4. Different organisational emphasis
5. Different clients

Starting with the first point, the market is different. Britain is a far more homogenous market than India. The sheer width of the market is astounding in India when you compare it to how the rest of the world looks.

Two - the work practises are far more evolved. Largely a result of the different clients which our company has in India and the UK. India projects are a bottom up exercise. You deal with the implementers of strategy, the marketing teams. In the UK, projects take a top-down approach. Your clients are the strategic planning & research teams within organisations, usually at the most senior global positions in the company. Since strategic planning and research teams are not the implementers of projects, this adds an additional layer of work within the project - the job of communicating the output of projects to the implementers (read marketing teams) on behalf of the client. There are also greater chances of a project not seeing the light of day and being implemented once it is complete. So, UK projects lay a far greater emphasis on the communication of the outputs, visible in fancy output, use of graphics and advanced presentation formats and workshops are the point of sale for all this work.

Its not looking good...

Recently came across the following info around a project I am working on.
Its a comparison of India with China, Thailand and India. Check out the education figures. Makes me wonder and feel that all perhaps may not be well going forward...

Risk & Consumer Behaviour

A lot is being written these days about the "global credit crunch". A result of financiers' ability to create complicated financial assets out of consumer debt and trade debt as an asset on the global market. The advantages of doing this were that risky consumer debt instead of lying on banks' books could be sold as a rent providing asset on the global market and would therefore spread the risk across the entire financial food chain.

So what happened? Where did it all go wrong? Well, frankly, if you minimise your risk, what usually happens? You end up taking more and more of it. And this is exactly what happened in the mortgage market. Since the risk of mortgage takers defaulting was supposed to get passed around the world as a rent providing asset, the original mortgage provider had no qualms in offering more and more risky mortgage since it was not going to be on his books anyways. It ended up being an orgy of mortgage being doled out with people with no income proofs being offered loans for houses. The most safe form of lending backed by a person's own dwelling became more risky than the personal loan being offered around. Whats more, it was available at much lower interest rates than personal loans. A crisis which was waiting to happen...

A blog a month...

Have been really indisciplined about writing on the blog. Hopefully should be able to correct it a bit this month. So what all has happened since the last time I wrote here.

Well, India won the T20 world cup, lost a ODI series to Australia, won the solitary T20 against them and the leftists finally lived up to their tag of being the appendix of India. A useless piece of evolutionary history which has lingered well beyond its time, is of no constructive use to the body but boy...what a racket it causes if inflamed!!

Another strange quirk of India's destiny - why do leaders who are basically divisive at heart simply refuse to die - harkishen singh surjeet, VP singh etc etc. These guys just live on and on. The ones who die are the dynamic varieties - Pramod Mahajan, Rajesh Pilot, Madhavrao Scindia..

Another cross the country bears...