René Seifert - Entrepreneur & Global Citizen

Something I really don’t want to miss out on reporting was my visit to Bangalore’s Vatsalya Orphanage last Saturday. Thanks to my neighbour Shashi who is like a sister to me, takes care of my house when I am travelling and likewise of me when I am at home in Bangalore, has been involved for years into charity work for this place. The entire “Abhaya Ashram” of the compound has been handed over by the Maharaja of Mysore in 1948 then under the title of “Association for moral and social hygiene” - so says the inscript carved in stone at the entry.

I bow my head in deepest respect for all the work which Shashi and the other volunteers are putting into making this place a little oasis for those who would otherwise be forgotten and left behind. The place is neat, in good shape and very well run which is a challenge by itself: hiring some full-time staff, refurbishing things which need it most and constantly trying to find donors for funding.

I got such a very warm welcome by the around 50 children who were waiting in excitement for the “Uncle from Germany”, sitting row by row on mattresses. Many questions which I had to answer from “What do people eat in Germany” to “Why are you so tall”? I spend a good there, at some point solving some algebra equations with them (they really got all of them right). It was indeed for me very touching seeing all these bright, curious and energetic kids in front of me who certainly did not have the best start in the past, but thanks to Vatsalya could look into a brighter future.

Here is the bedroom of the children where they start their day really early at 5.30 am. And I could tell that they made a very robust and disciplined impression without missing out on giving them as much love as such a setting allows for. (Here are, by the way, a few more pictures on Flickr.)

My words in Vatsalya’s guestbook started with: “Where there is caring, there is hope”. Yet “caring” should not just remain an abstract metaphor on paper, but ought to translate into an obligation for myself to make a difference. For instance, reasonable money can pay for many clothes, books or desks in the classroom. And spending time there means equally doing a favour to the children as it doing a favour to myself for staying grounded to the realities of life and receiving these small little gestures that money can’t buy.

7.14 AM

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Posted to Bangalore, English, India, Language Selection, Veritas

Yesterday I had a very inspiring flight with Lufthansa 754 from Frankfurt to Bangalore, because my seat-neighbour was a "dead head". What sounds grim to the uneducated ear (like mine was till yesterday as well), is a common expression in the aviation industry. It means that a flight attendant is on a flight (sometimes even in uniform) as a passenger, because this flight serves as a transportation flight to her next mission where he or she will be on duty. The reason yesterday was that there was no paying guest in the First Class, hence Lufthansa kept it empty, but therefore was coping with a surplus of flight attendants. Yet, for the return flight of the same crew which will leave tomorrow morning from Bangalore to Frankfurt on LH 755, there again the plane is fully loaded, hence the flight attendant is required. 

Another thing I can assure: My "dead head"-neighbour was very much alive and very friendly, too. And as I always want to know it all, I poked her with tons of question which she patiently answered. How the crews constantly change and they have been trained to work together well in each and every constellation, but that for a longer trip of a few days team-spirit would kick in which would even make a difference for the better. So, it's basically like in any other profession.

What I really appreciated was her commitment which she had towards her company which was true and genuine, and not just a show to please me. And my own observation with Lufthansa's service overall is really positive, and especially it has improved over the last 10 years. In the vast majority, the crew expels a solid German charm which is perfectly fine: It's not subservient, good so, but I'd describe it as friendly, fast and efficient. As the service on board is improving, the gap to the service level on the ground (especially in Germany) is widening. What I have experienced there already from the check-in counter to the desk in the lounges was abysmal. 

When I asked my neighbour what the two shittiest incidents were in her 10 years of flying, she mentioned two. The second-shittiest was a flight from San Francisco to Frankfurt when a passenger got a heart attack. Thanks to the defibrillator on board, a doctor who happened to be on board, managed to re-animate the person and recommended a safety-landing to bring the patient to intense care on the ground. The plane was already somewhere at the east coast of Canada and the nearest airport was prohibitive because of bad weather. An other, further airport seemed possible, the plane was in descend, the captain advised the crew that due to bad weather and a short runway that it should prepare for a "safe landing". The weather was that bad that in the final approach, however, the captain decided for a go-around with next destination Reykjavik in Island. At this point the patient who scratched the end of his days by a narrow margin started to argue with the crew. 

Not what one might expect, that he was scared for his life and why the plane didn't land to get him to hospital. By contrary, he insisted he was fine, he needed to go to Frankfurt, because he would miss his connecting flight. Yet, the pilot clearly told him "no way", first because the doctor said differently and second, by now the plane had burnt so much fuel through the missed approach that it had to land for refuelling anyway. In Reykjavik all went fine, the ambulance took the patient and the plane could continue to Frankfurt within one hour.

Clearly number one of my neighbours bad events happened on October 7th, 2002 when a Boing 747 from Lufthansa in marginal weather conditions was set for approach to Mexico City airport. The crew on the flight deck got a warning from the Traffic Collision Avoidance System (TCAS) about another plane which would intersect the course of their flight. Air Traffic Control (ATC) gave instruction NOT to climb what was exactly what TCAS commanded. As the planes got closer and closer, the pilots - according to their training - decided to ignore the ATC, follow the TCAS and pull up. My "dead head" sat on the left side of the plane looking out of the window when the Jumbo went into a steep climb, just at that moment the clouds cleared up for a moment and she saw the other plane, an Airbus from Mexicana Airlines, under-flying the Jumbo at 30 meters distance. Pretty shitty picture, isn't it. I found an online-source about the incident here.

The investigation found out 1.5 years later that it was the clear fault of Mexican Air Traffic Control and the pilots had saved the lives of their own 388 plus 120 people of the other plane through their disobedience. Interesting I found the smart way of my neighbour to cope with the incident: She wanted to come over it, deliberately requested the same flight again and for landing asked the captain to watch the landing from the jump-seat from the cockpit. After seeing how this landing could go smooth and safe, she managed to mentally tick it off once forever, and continue enjoying her work as she had always done.

Trust that this is a category leader in my collection of T.I.I. (=This is India). Check the pics out, they are no fake. It’s a product to purchase in a regular shop, especially for festivals like Diwali where whole India is being blown up in controlled micro-explosions. And yes, it’s called “Hitler”, and to not make a mistake who stands behind as the godfather of the name, here’s Hitler’s picture, too.

The backside is equally enlightening. It names the company “Standard Fireworks (P) Limited” in Sivakasi, a town south-west of Madura in the state Tamil Nadu. According to Wikipedia, Sivakasi is famous for its fireworks-factories, more than 300 in number. Given that dense competitive landscape, there seem to be no strings attached to differentiate oneself “creatively” from the rest of the pack.

After more than four years in India, I no longer get really flabbergasted by such encounters. My interpretation of this name-choice is that it is certainly an allegory of Hitler’s war machine and its penetrating power to be transferred to the fireworks. Yet, there is a small relief looking at the seal on the backside again: The exact name of the product is in fact “10 cm Hitler” which might inadvertently point to true size of the prick - before he gets blown up.

Today I met Petra & Jürgen, two good friends who had lived in Bangalore till 2004 and we remembered a hilarious story which is truly a T.I.I. – clearly on the sympathetic side: I used to order pizzas in Bangalore from Domino Pizza which always got delivered tasty, crispy, hot and fresh. Somehow, the first time when I placed the order I spelled my last name several times

“S – E – I – F – E – R – T”

The person on the other side entered something into the IT-based customer- & order system, the pizza arrived, all well. The next time called for an order, I got greeted with the standard “Good evening, here is Domino Pizza, for taking your order may I request your phone number.” As for all these home delivery services the phone number is the unambiguous identifier (“primary key”) for the customer. I told him my number, he typed it into the system and asked back after what had prompted on his screen: “Are you Mr. Eife”? As a good German I would have had to correct him, ask him to change the name into the correct one, and if he doesn’t get it let him know that “verdammt noch mal, jetzt merken Sie es sich gefälligst!!” (too German to translate)

Yet, being in South India, knowing that it would just do nothing if I ask him to make that change, knowing that I would just get a virtual head-swing with “ya, ya, ya” and zero action to my request, and even worse create confusion and drastically increasing the risk to go to bed hungry that night, I succumbed to my destiny and replied to his question if I was “Mr. Eife” – “Yes, that’s right”. And frankly, I found so much of a likening of this name that whenever I called Domino Pizza I would say myself: “Good evening, my name is Eife and I would like to order a Pizza …”

10.51 PM

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Posted to Bangalore, English, India, Language Selection

Yesterday in Bangalore I felt honoured to attend a function of my friend and fellow EO -member Dr. Arjun Kalyanpur and his wife Dr. Sunita Maheshwari. Arjun is a radiologist, his wife Sunita a pediatric cardiologist. Five years ago, without having an M.B.A. or financial backing, this doctor-couple started a company out of their living room: Teleradiology Solutions. A medical service provider which delivers radiology-reports from Bangalore to the world. Or like Sunita explained: “A brown company in a white space.” Today the company boasts 160 employees and sits in the reputed technology-district of Whitefield in outer Bangalore. This is the building with the chaotic Indian reality to the left, and the highly performing Indian reality to the right. (All the pictures from the function are here in my Flickr-Set ).

Teleradiology Solutions’ value proposition is very straightforward: Enhance the capacity of radiologists to hospitals in the U.S., Singapore and India by a remote service, including a cost-advantage, where radiologists in India would receive digital scans via broadband. In their speciality “emergency cases”, these tele-doctors would submit their diagnosis back as fast as 30 minutes. The company is the only provider outside of Singapore which has been granted the necessary approval by the Singapore Health Ministry to do so and is currently making inroads to Europe as well.

The reason for yesterday’s function at 5 pm for High Tea was the next consequential step to enable the company’s further growth. Hence, a state-of-the-art training facility under the Sanskrit name of “Rad Gurunkel” has been inaugurated. The guest of honour to do so was Ms. Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, founder and Chairman of Biocon Ltd . Ms Shaw, besides being the richest woman in India, is highly respected across the entire country and often quoted as a role-model for women to reach highest achievements in a predominantly male-dominated society. Ms. Shaw is here with the candle lighting the lamp, Arjun to the right in the black suit.

The speeches of Ms. Shaw, Arjun and Sunita reflected pretty much the key-challenge for knowledge-driven companies like Biocon and Teleradiology Solutions: Scale. Getting the right people on board, bringing them to the required level of skills, and retaining them by growing these skills. Likewise, Infosys has recently invested US-$ 300 mn into an entire campus in Mysore. Being an entrepreneur myself, I felt amazed by the level of meticulous detail how Arjun’s company has artfully crafted processes which would be able to replicate quality of a radiology diagnosis 8,000 km such as if the doctor was right sitting beside his patient. There is for instance one FTE (full time employee) only taking care that the regulatory requirements from the U.S. are met and audited accordingly.

Constant training of medical, technical and administrative staff has according to Arjun in the past proved the most important factor in attaining that quality along with a very low defect-rate in this not very error-tolerant area. In order to be able to take the company to the next level, the new training facility will be able to scale and institutionalize the various training programmes. Here is Arjun on the right (still in the black suit, not in a white lab coat :-) and me to the left.

I wish Arjun and Sunita and all the fantastic people I met in their company yesterday all the best for their future aspirations which are constantly bolstered by hard work, dedication and honesty. In that respect, I felt deeply moved by a quotation which Sunita brought forward from the great Mahatma Gandhi: “Learn as if you will live forever, live as if you will die tomorrow.”

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 … :-) 

Driving yesterday evening though Bangalore, I wondered from  a journalistic angle what is really new, what is worth mentioning that hasn’t been covered yet. Globalization is there, it’s a done thing, in spite of critics claiming the opposite or worse some conspirational “there-will-be-a-backlash-at-some-point-in-time”-claims. Then, Bangalore City is growing like hell; driving through Cunningham Road, I almost didn’t recognize this street compared to when I was sitting in Audrey D’Souza’s office from the Indo-German Chamber of Commerce for the first time in 2003. The road, which had the typical functional look and worn down structures, nowadays boasts of shining shopping malls, one McDonald’s, a Reliance electronic store and some more. Amazing, the speed of transformation towards progress, whilst Germany as a developed country is facing backward steps with a political drift to the left. Well, true, but not too new.

When I arrived at my destination, the house of Moritz & Nadine for their farewell party, a couple who has met in Bangalore and who have become very dear friends of mine, I realized how big the expat community has emerged. How organized and at the same time scattered it is. And how luckily inevitable it is to become somehow socialized by the environment you get exposed to. Finally, what scale of magnitude the exchange into both directions has grown: This week, I got to know that on any given daily Lufthansa-flight between Frankfurt and Bangalore (LH 754) and back (LH 755) 20 seats would be occupied by staff from the software giant SAP. Indian engineers being trained in Walldorf (Germany), but in its own right German engineers being trained by the Indian practise in Bangalore. So another very good friend of mine Ingo who runs the Indian operation of Wienerberger and me, brought together some thoughts on our way back from the party what has happed over the last years.

With a pinch of nostalgia, in 2003 when I moved to Bangalore, there was one platform for Germans to meet: the first Friday evening per month in the Goethe-Institute, then still in Lavelle Road on the upper terrace-floor of Axel Schorlemmer’s German restaurant.  A tiny, little group of expats, at good days 15, at less fortunate days maybe 8, but where in fact everybody knew everybody. With Bangalore getting increasingly interesting for students for an internship, a “Bangalore Trainee Group” got started. A rather loose and fast changing mailing-list on Yahoo where stuff got posted on “where’s the next party” and “who wants to join the weekend trip to Hampi”. Needless to mention, also a good dating platform for bridging lonely evenings in the remote parallel world of South India.

The point that I want to make is the dynamics in group building with all the phenomenons that come along: group cohesion, a higher degree of organization, brand identity and the emergence of sub-groups. A good example is the Bangalore Expat Club (BEC) which was founded in 2005 by Arvind Chandra. And his story goes like this. Being an Indian (!), who had spent the last years in France, he was sent to an assignment to Bangalore. He didn’t know anybody, sat around alone in a pub and said to himself that this is an awkward situation. Hence, he founded BEC with one regular meeting once a week, same time, same place. In additional, what helped leverage the reach of his effort, his mother was in web-design and set up the BEC-website. Slowly, but steadily, this group started to build momentum, with a vast array of activities from scavenger hunt to cooking classes happening. Today, Arvind is back to France, yet the club is run with a highly active and institutionalized board who is taking their responsibility very seriously. What is more, the quantity and quality of members has grown exponentially, too, so that each member adds a lot of value by his or her network and serving as a catalyst for exciting events as well as access to companies, institutions and governmental bodies.

However, as nobody is forced to join the club, and the few hundred members of BEC by far don’t reach out to all the thousands of expats in Bangalore, sub-groups have started to emerge. You might go to one party, meet lots of Germans, go to another party and meet lots of Germans again, yet the people from the two groups might not know each other. Something which was unthinkable five years ago. Maybe for those, a social network like InterNations is taking of the concept of permanent “expatriotship”, or let’s call it “global citizenship”, to the next level. Capitalizing on the flexibility of an online platform with global reach combined with natural group-anchors in various physical destinations, it combines the best of the real and the virtual world. I am convinced, looking ahead, that this is a life-model that more and more people will embark on. It has never been as easy as today.

4.32 AM

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Posted to Bangalore, English, Globalization, India, Language Selection, Offshoring

„Mother India“ has me back. After a few days in Bangalore, I just arrived in Delhi, India’s capital and the center of political gravity. Delhi breathes quite a different atmosphere than South India, it’s more hectic, occasionally more rude that Bangalore’s soft-talking “ya-ya-ya”-manners. And not to mention then climate where Bangalore is advancing towards the hot season with temperatures above 30° C while Delhi at this time of the year falls down to 6°C.

I am staying at the Taj Palace in the Diplomatic Enclave where the otherwise improvised Indian reality all of a sudden becomes so overly-perfect. The reason being here is the upcoming EO University which is about to commence tomorrow with friends and fellow-entrepreneurs from all over the world, some whom I met at the respective universities in Tokyo and Berlin, new ones who are eager to get inspired of what the country to offer. Just wanted to share my personal observation that the pace of globalization and hence economic integration is accelerating with a few examples I have come across recently:

• Apparantly, there is a magazine in India “At a Glance” focusing on the target group of Expats. The magazine also runs a website which is somehow stuck in the online stone-age with just an IP-address instead of a proper URL. Well, that’s in the irony, a perfect example of the masala from aspirations, a hands-on culture, yet running at different paces at the same time for getting a market vs. caring for quality.

• Then there is a yet-another-social network, this one connecting expats around the world InterNations whose site-structure looks like a straightforward copy-cat of XING. But certainly another catalyst to propel a concept of “global citizenship”, a model which I am convinced is strongly on the rise.

• All major consultancies of the world have a distinct set-up to facilitate their clients in their international expansions. From my perception of e.g. Ernst & Young at the DLD Conference, they seem to run on the customer-facing side a 2-dimensional matrix: One for the industry, the other for geography. So if I was a German media company interested in India, I could speak to Gerhard Müller , head of the tech, media & entertainment-practise of the firm, who would then join hands with his Indian counterpart Farokh Balsara. To mention the efforts of another consultancy, KPMG publishes an excellent quarterly magazine about “Emerging Markets”. It’s in German language and I just read the 4/2007 in the flight from Bangalore to Delhi. What is more, some of the many studies like e.g. “Mobile Payments in Asia-Pacific” are also available in English and available for download via PDF.

• Today I got an e-mail invitation from Stefan Graf, Consul General of Germany in Chennai to a attend a panel discussion with Germany's Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier in Bangalore on February 26th about "New Concepts for Sustainable Urban Development". The topic is very hot as the trend to the supercity is gaining momentum as Richard Wurman's 192021-initiative shows: That we are about to have 19 cities in which more than 20 mn people live in the 20th century. And there is a lot of common questions to be asked how so many people with diverse backgrounds and intentions are going to form a purposeful habitat. 

And here on YouTube I stumbled-upon two videos from the India-Panel I was moderating two weeks ago in Munich which cover altogether 20 of the 30 minutes from the session:

3.19 PM

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Posted to Bangalore, Business, English, Globalization, India, Innovation, Language Selection, Offshoring

It's funny to see how journalists copy & paste topics from each other. I realized that when I was featured in the SPIEGEL some 15 months ago and a flood of interview requests followed up. Similarly appears to me a current interest in virtual PAs (personal assistants) from India in the German media. I have read myself quite a few articles about e.g. GetFriday or YourManIndia in the last weeks. But I guess the issue both as a journalistic topic and a service worthwhile to consider has been magnified by the success of Tomothy Ferriss' "The 4-Hour Work Week". The book is all about efficiency by outsourcing as much as possible into a self-functioning and self-healing personal eco-system.  Hereby, such a personal assistant in India at reasonable cost can help booking travels, doing research, online shopping etc.

Funnily, in the aftermath of the media coverage a few German friends asked me if such a service would make sense for the German market. My take on that: Certainly, one could create demand for it, I don't see the Germans in that respect different from US-Americans where the service has gained traction. However, I rather see a supply side problem with German skills in India. To put it quite narrow: As soon as German language is required to get a task successfully done, I see significant quality issues. The number of Indians who are so fluent in German is not that high and those who are up to the level will easily get a job in an ever higher-valued and hence higher-paid job. So early on, one will get into nasty operational, quality and especially scaling issues.

So if I had to make a call as an entrepreneur or investor, I would make a pass on such a business proposal. Yet, if the task can be narrowly reduced to pure English skills, well, then the world is flat and the service can be targeted anywhere.