Yesterday it was raining like mad in Bangalore, with the usual effect that the temperature drops immediately and significantly. What happens then is that the sewers can't take all the water. The resulting effect is that the shit (or what has turned into a liquid from that feed material) is being flushed from the canalization-system onto the surface. Hence, my Sunday afternoon-walk through Bangalore received an unexpected layer of olfactory enrichment. Yet, on the pictures, one can't tell.
Here a view on the Empire Hotel on the crossroad of Brigade/Museum-Road.
That's my coffee-break in Coffee Day on Richmond Road in my neighbourhood.
The entire picture set (19 photographs) is here on Flickr .
Similarly, the IT-industry in India has been facing some smoothing and soothing as well lately – if not outright shit. The drop of the dollar has created some major headache as it puts margins under tremendous pressure. Undoubtedly, in such a scenario, the vulnerability of the entire business model becomes obvious: As the major reasons for most companies in the west is clearly still cost saving, the ability of Indian companies to raise prices to compensate for the decline revenues (after exchanging them into the home-currency Rupee) is very limited. Economically, speaking prices in this sector are relatively elastic.
I had an interesting conversation with a friend who is working in a HR-position at one of the successful mid-tier companies in Bangalore. Internally, cost are being cut. Where the HR-team used to fly to some other Indian town for recruiting and stayed in 5-star hotels, they are back to 3-star and occasionally even the Indian Railway System. Yet, on the labour market, interestingly, the unidirectional spiralling-up of wages has changed its momentum. Top performers, especially in some sought-after technologies and industry-verticals are still commanding high and higher salaries.
However, that's the surprising news, some companies have fired staff, something which has been unheard of since the collapse of the "New Economy"-bubble in 2002. Again, having a closer look to what happens, it reveals a more differentiated picture. As companies can't really afford to forego growth by not getting talent on board (otherwise their competitors will snatch them away), they are still hiring. At the same time they are sacking the "bottom of the pyramid" which they felt they could carry around in fat times, but can't when the belt needs to be tightened. That, in turn, has led to a re-shuffling of the labour-market where the increase in supply has broadened hiring options at reasonable rates.
Sounds like an interesting case-study for aficionados of price-volume phenomenons with a pinch of game-theory in competitive environments … :-)
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