René Seifert – Entrepreneur & Global Citizen

Catching up from our first encounter at NASSCOM's "IT Product Conclave" in August, I felt very proud and privileged to receive an invitation from Anal K. Jain today to Bangalore's pristine Golf Course at the Karnataka Golf Association. Anal has an amazing career behind him with setting up IBM India as employee #1 and after that likewise starting-up the Indian operations for Sun Microsystems. He is strongly involved in mentoring young IT-companies together with NASSCOM, India'a industry association for companies in the space of software development and business process outsourcing (BPO).

His major focus, however, is his current involvement into Microventures, a for-profit fund in the space of microfinance. The sector has recently gained strong public awareness after Mohammed Yunus' got awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his Grameen Bank, a micro-finance institution from Bangladesh. Indeed, the beautiful thing about micro-finance is three-fold: One, it is ideally suited to raise people out of (absolute) poverty in a sustainable way. Second, giving these people a sense of dignity as the improvement of their lives is the immediate result of the empowerment towards entrepreneurship. And third, yet another confirmation that profit is good – both for the new entrepreneurs, the bank as the mediator in between and ultimately the investor on the financial supply side. Microfinance proves to be a perfect example for the "Bottom of the Pyramid"-principle, where  "the poor" are not just considered from a philanthropic perspective, but as equal participants in a vivid economy: As entrepreneurs and customers.   

Anal's role for Microventures is an advisor for directing the incoming funds from the European headquarter of Microventures into prospective channels in India. The exiting thing is to understand how the company tackles this challenge in probably the most unsystematic, fragmented, long-tail market that lacks any supportive eco-system so far. Clearly, the opportunity in the aggregate is huge with 70 % of India's 1.1  bn population living in the rural areas being potential customer for micro-finance. My key insights:

1. As it is entirely impossible to reach out to each and every of the few hundred million potential customer directly, one has to rely on existing structures of microfinance-institutions which – again – are structurally fragmented and widespread all over the country. Microventures acts as a "fund in fund", i.e. like a meta-layer on top of these existing institutions by taking an equity share in exchange for a cash-injection.

2. This cash will be supplemented by bank-loans and then dispersed down to the village level by local employees of the same institution. There the employee will invest into a group of women. Why women? It has proved – reality bites – that men against all promises tend to spend any incoming money at the bar around the corner while women prove to use it for the purpose of their small enterprise. Why groups? Addressing a little community seems to provide a joint sense of ownership, better performance and a lower default rate.

3. On average, one loan will amount to Rs. 5,000/- (app. EUR 80.-) which is repayable within one year in 50 instalments where the credit-employee will show up for weekly collection. In the absence of formalized agreements, not to mention their legal enforcement, the personal rapport between the bank's local representative and the recipients is essential. Ultimately, you don't want to either fool or disappoint someone whom you consider a friend by defaulting on your debt.

4. Interest rate is usually a reflection of two factors: risk and cost of capital deployment. By nature the risk of such a loan without any collateral is high. Astonishingly, the default rate is relatively low due to the measures explained above. On the other hand, as one can easily fathom, the cost of deployment along these various cascades of intermediaries as well a logistic issues of transporting money back and forth is painstakingly high. Therefore, the annual interest comes at a price around 20 percent.

5. Mircoventures' role, besides the allocation the funds in the investments phase, consists in the governance of the investee companies. The model to earn its money back could be either a trade sale of the stake to some strategic investor or possibly an IPO which would create a liquid event for the limited investors. The fund itself makes its money in the typical two-fold model of a fee as the share of funds under management plus some carry in case of disproportionate returns. 

Anal being a seasoned businessman was very candid that "if you are looking for pure economic profit, then there are easier industries to go into than microfinance in India". That's why the limited partners of Mircoventures are predominantly wealthy individuals who want to invest and do some good at the same time. Who are seeking for both a return on capital gains and a return on social benefit. In the microfinance industry the term coined for that aspiration is called "double bottom line".

I really like that expression. Maybe we should all look for whatever we do, a bit more for that "double bottom line". 

What I wanted to briefly write about already in the last few weeks is my engagement in an amazing group of entrepreneurs and top-executives in Bombay (Mumbai): The MumbaiAngels. What we would call a “Verein” in Germany, has the shape of an association of currently 40 individuals who have an interest in investing their money in prospective start-ups and early-stage companies in India.

The association has been set up one year ago, spearheaded by my friend Sasha Mirchandani who is a seasoned entrepreneur and currently the Head of India for BlueRun Ventures. How MumbaiAngels works is easily explained: We meet every 6 weeks in Bombay and three to five pre-selected companies would pitch in front of us: 15 minutes sharp followed by a friendly but critical Q&A-session by the potential investors. Each angel is entirely free to express independently interest in a particular company through a feedback form. At the end all the forms get aggregated internally whereby the level of interest in a particular company could (and maybe should) also help as an indicator of attractiveness from the “wisdom-of-crowds” perspective.

In the next step, say if 9 people have interest in a particular company, they would go along for a joint due diligence, deal structure into which each individual would invest the amount of money he or she wants to commit. Overall, from my experience of building up an incubator, I am quite impress about the level of maturity for the processes which are critical to come to terms from filtering interesting investment targets to having the investment in place.

The sectors we are looking at have not been defined too narrow, and right so. Ultimately, it should be something that scales well, because it either organizes and unstructured industry in India with its huge market potential behind, addresses a clear need or something which contains a technology-driven nucleus whose economics are prone to disproportionately fast distribution and foreseeable revenues. (My personal investment-appetite goes very much to the latter, certainly because I have some sort of expertise in the tech, media, internet and mobile-space.)

The advantage for entrepreneurs seeking for investments to address Mumbai Angels is manifold: The investors involved bring extensive experience in building and growing business to the table, where the Q&A session during the pitch alone can ask the right questions to tweak and turn something in the plan or model. Moreover, MumbaiAngels are far beyond just throwing “dumb money” at you, then sitting on our hands and waiting what returns we’ll receive. What we are looking for is an active role via ongoing mentoring, door-opening to customers or partners and access to capital for the subsequent rounds of funding.

I am glad to be part of that fine group. If you are an entrepreneur seeking start-up capital for a venture in the Indian market, feel free to address me. I will see what I can do for you and what I can do for us – the MumbaiAngels.

At 11 pm these days looking west from the Hermitage to the Vasilevsky Island, you can still see the silverlight from the famous "White Nights" of this northern metropolis. This was pretty much the sight which we had for our memorable gala-dinner from the balcony of Vladimir Palace during our closing ceremony. And in the inside it didn't look ugly either.

I fell in love with this city in 2002 when I spent three weeks here to learn Russian and stay with my Russian family. Now coming back for our EO European/African Conference, I realized that a lot had changed (the Church of the Saviour on Blood was fortunately still in place :-)

Apart from that, most remarkably, while in 2002 you could still have dinner with the cosy feeling of paying "Eastern prices", you would now have an Eastern dinner paying entirely Western prices. Not to mention property, where the going rate for the square meter in the centre ranges from US-$ 30,000 to 40,000. Overall, the magnificence of the city stands in even better splendour as it was refurbished for its 300 year celebration after being founded in 1703 by Peter the Great.

Our hosts from EO St. Petersburg under the leadership of Steve Caron, Sergey Vykhodtsev, Christian Courbois, Dmitry Agarunov (Moscow) together with the event-expertise from the EO staff brought together a real "Once in a Lifetime Experience", something EO is rigorously dedicated to. The event was a perfect mix of learning sessions, dine-arounds, social events and came – thanks to a compact group of around 50 people from 26 chapters – with strong personal bonding. Our Grand Hotel Europe as the venue in itself was a living piece of Russian history. 

From the learning side, the first day started with a panel of our St. Petersburg chapter sharing their stories how they started off in the "Wild East" 15 years ago getting kidnapped, held for ransom, smuggling US-$ 1.5 mn in an old car with their head of security carrying a machine gun, smuggling valuable dogs in the plane to Beijing etc. (I thought I had seen and heard a lot in India, but these stories are all petty-theft against the environment when the Soviet Union transformed itself a sort of "kiosk capitalism"). We had a fantastic session with marketing guru Thomas Gad, author of 4D-Branding where the 4 dimensions stand for functional, mental, social and spiritual, like here exemplified on the world famous brand "Red Bull":

What I always perceive particularly inspiring is when we have senior EO members sharing their experience like Mark Moses did on "Overcoming Adversity in Business and Life". His story carried enormous "goose pimple"-factor with his best friend severely betraying him in business, the office getting on fire, his child suffering from a brain tumour, yet Mark still keeping head above the mud, growing even bigger and condensing his experience in tangible learnings with great take-home value for others.

On the event side, our friends in the "Venice of the North" were able to pull some magic strings which allowed us to do something which is usually completely out of reach: a private tour in the incomparable Hermitage in the night hours when the museum was already closed to the public. It was a very memorable opportunity to immerse in the beauty of the art collection comprising reminiscence of Russian history and Western artists like Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt or Van Gogh whose last picture before his suicide at the age of 37, "Thatched Cottages" is part of the collection. 

Ah, and there was Vodka, and even more Vodka. As a good rule, keep drinking only Vodka, it will have its certain effect, but you won't have a headache the next day. By contrast, a very bad idea is mixing champagne with beer and Vodka. (I was oblivious of the latter and had to pay a bitter price after the first night out). So repeat after me: Vodka alone = good, Vodka in da mix = bad.

And last but not least, I met my family again, it was a warm-hearted reunion from the very first moment, as if I had departed 6 days ago and not 6 years ago. As the habit goes, Igor (=the father) and I had put a "a few" kilogram on, Ira (=the mother) is still as elegant as she always used to be and little Ksusha (=the sister) was a baby and will have her first school day on September 1st. Especially Ksusha overtook me big time: 6 years ago I was much better in Russian than her, and now the scenario has entirely reversed. 

And, yes, of course, there was Vodka again. (Only Vodka = good.) And as the Russian bear had been on our plate in the shape of sausage in the restaurant Zver, we felt obliged to toast him in a respectful way, too.

The entire picture set of the journey, by the way, is here on my Flickr-Account. St. Petersburg is one of these place you have to see before you die. Even more as there are two opportunities to see two totally different faces of the city. In summer with the white nights where the sun sets at 1 am and rises at 4 am, where the skirts of the girls parading on Nevsky Prospect are pretty short, and in winter when the sun rises at 11 am and sets at 3 pm, when the temperature drops to minus 30° C, where thick furs are covering those same girls, theatres as well as operas are in full swing and Vodka is the fuel to provide both warmth and happiness.

Spasibo (=thank you), to EO St. Petersburg of having us and giving us the truthful hospitality which only a Slavic heart can convey. 

6.21 AM

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Yesterday evening in Munich I listened to a speech from the CEO of Boston Consulting Group Hans-Peter Bürkner about "globalization", an issue that has my natural affinity. Yet, the speech as such I found rather "moderately novel" as its main lines of thought were put forward by Thomas Friedman already 3 years ago in “The World is Flat”. Especially, Mr. Bürkner's part about the role of governments was more of wishful thinking than a reality-based account on the true interests of such a body which is depending on a free electorate.

Anyway, in case someone is interested on more vision and foresight in terms of "what's next" on the global scene, being addressed from an entirely different angle in the shape of a novel, I happily recommend 8W8. The author is Ralf Hirt whom I met in January after moderating the India-panel at the DLD-conference in Munich. It's instrumental to understand the background of Ralf to become clear on both his motivation and insight: He has held leadership positions in the internet industry for a decade and has lived all over the world, in his home town Stuttgart, Hong Kong, Sydney, London and currently New York. In crossing these two lines of experience extrapolating their status-quo plus visioning with lots of foresight, he conceived his first book 8W8. It is worthwhile mentioning that the book is indeed fiction, yet the concept of a "new world modelling engine" are not so far away that this book would fall into the category of "science fiction".

Well, what is it about? The storyline deals with 15 high calibre people from of the "Golden Sky", a community committed with the aspiration to change the world for the sake of good. These 15 people come from a whole array of diverse backgrounds, like Oskar Feller, an editor for a leading internet magazine, Maria who is a doctor developing high-scale programmes to fight HIV/AIDS, Priyanka from India who is an IT-crack working for a global media company or Emanuel, a philosopher and Taoist who has been named for the Nobel Prize. All the characters of the story are here on the 8W8-blog. This group of people is hosted by Winston Chee, a billionaire internet-entrepreneur from China in his island on Hawaii EA-RA.

In this serene and secluded environment, the 15 brains spend a whole week picking each other brains and inspiring each other to solve one crucial problem: How to make the interrelations of economies and people visible in a sort of virtual map-overlay on top of the existing geography. What they come up with is the new world modelling engine "8W8" which can be pictured as a virtual helicopter the "pilot" would use to fly over the terrain of the earth to make these invisible connections visible. Delving even deeper into the concept it transcends into a new form of radical constructivism as the vision the pilot would receive on his dashboard would be a crossover between absolute measurable truths and his set of values/selective perception. What the pilot would get to see is both on “earth level” and on “sky level” the “volumes” of a whole set of parameters. The former range from hard factors like population, GNP, metrics on infrastructure, public institutions to innovation, the latter comprise for example metrics for democracy, human rights, quality of living, level of terrorism and such.

Yet, what is more that beyond statistics on GNP or PPP which are available as top-level data today, 8W8 equally entails a bottom-up approach from the level of the “element” (individual) which will aggregate in “streams” into “Global Space Tribes” according to its interest, e.g. “MBA Jazz Wireless Tribe (MBAJWT)”, “Catholic Fast Food Blue Collar Single Mother of Four (CFFBCSMF)” or the “Taoist Tribe (TT)”. These become even more interesting if one looks at actual vertically positioned Web 2.0 platforms which either try to bring a community of like-minded people together like “Dogster” or provide a tool to define and organize a target group of any shape like Ning. Yet, both of these platforms have in common that they require someone to become a “member” by “registration” and do all these various steps actively online. In that context I do believe that there will be not in too far future a kind of “ambient computing” where the unconscious behaviour patterns will be able to bring people in a meaningful way together. Hence, aggregating this sort of behaviour and making it somehow visible is not that far away from 8W8’s concept of the “Global Space Tribe”.

One thing I had hoped throughout the whole story to occur, is a bit more of conflict, friction, sex: As Oskar and Theresa, a computer scientist, seem to come along very well, I waited for that forbidden kiss, the clandestine quickie to happen under the waterfall of perfectly pristine EA-RA. Not for the sake of sensation, but to portray people regardless of their brains and social status when they become most human: emotional to the extent of irrational. The figures appear prim and proper, and at best tease each other lightly in order to surely succumb to perfect harmony. Irrespective of that, what I liked from a storytelling point of view is the ability to portray a broad set of global citizens who find a common denominator to discuss a topic, be focussed in defining a goal, accepting each other’s variety of viewpoints, being non-judgemental and fully embark on the beneficial concept of diversity.

Altogether, I liked the book a lot as it is coherently able to explain the road ahead in globalization by the force of the internet and the road ahead of the internet by the force of globalization. What gave me food for thought via the concepts of “Global Space Tribes” was the decreasing influence of governments, because free people in a free world are able to cross-pollinate their ideas and aspirations regardless of the strangulating rigidity of what we call a country today.  For someone like me who happily articulates his despise of today’s governments, the vision of 8W8 is one which deserves active pursuit.

Who is interested in buying the book, Amazon has it, either in print or for the Kindle.  

All my 10 years of being a radio-presenter till 2003 slightly re-appeared yesterday night when I was guest at the radio show at SeoFM.com, a weekly online-format of Germany's leading Search-Engine-Optimizers (SEOs) Marcus Tandler (a.k.a. Mediadonis ) and his "partner in crime" Ralf Götz (a.k.a. Fridaynite). It's a one hour talk format which is about the latest development/gossip from the SEO-scene mixed with a lot of infantile jokes – to which I contributed gladly :-) In addition, Mediadonis interviewed my on my business of offshore outsourcing to India for projects revolving around SEO, which could be either building some content-centred apps, some BPO driven tasks for e.g. ad-campains or content-production. Here is the link to the show for time-shifted listening (German language).

So one after the other:

• Sure, surprise, surprise, India is good at software engineering, yet as I have written already on this blog a few times, it's always a number game, hence: If you have 5 people for at least 3 months, it's worth considering. The more and the longer – the better.
• For BPO also big numbers pay off and it always will be much easier, maybe only feasible, if the task is not to a large degree dependant on German language.
• Content-production can work, again in English language. The challenge will be in recruiting and quality assurance, and again, will only pay off with scale.

Mediadonis charmingy titled this show "Rent a Jobkiller", no wonder as I had explained plainly : "My business model rests on two pillars: One is slashing German jobs and increasing unemployment, the other exploiting poor Indians and taking away their future". As there are really people who argue such nonsense with fully conviction, I have made it a virtue to repeat it ironically as often as possible …

5.55 PM

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Came along this very interesting observation from Delphi , an "innovative market researcher" from Germany who is looking today at society in 2017. The focus is Germany with a tangible bullet-point list on the various aspect of change, like my favourites

• The retreating state prompts an enhanced self-responsibility of the individual for health, private pensions, continuous education, etc.
• It is about "re-conquering" one’s own sovereignty about when and where to make a decision.
• People start interpreting the gaps and blanks of the retreating state as their own creative spaces: empowerment instead of accepting deficits.
• To reach their goal of a self-determined life, people form situational alliances: cooperation, dialogue and networking are the key principles people will live by.
• The "New Social Responsibility" combines public spirit and self-interest in a win-win-situation.

Other countries in Europe, but also Russia and the United States are displayed here. Not too surprisingly, globalization gets perceived predominantly as a threat where the reaction ranges from patriotism to denial to retreat into the local community. Looking a bit at the comparison between Germany and the other countries, my old joke seems to get confirmed that fortunately Germany in its own shitty state maintains with France and Italy two other countries it can still look down to ;-)

Overall I picked those 5 bullet-points above as I feel they reflect pretty well my own values according to which I try to live in 2008. My disbelief in Vater Staat (=Father Goverment, as a German proverbs tend to say) is tremendously profound and although the strangulation by tax and even more tax, besides other intrusions, are not coming to an end, people with sufficient flexibility will make their own choices about where and how they want to live and follow the old valid principle "You better have a plan for yourself, before someone else has his plan for you".

The frenzy in Europe is all around because of the low Dollar. I heard of people flying to New York to go shopping for designer clothes which could be less than 60 % compared to European price levels. Sure, seeing Big Apple for a weekend as an experience itself is worth a trip. (I will be in San Francisco myself in 3 weeks for the Web 2.0 Expo and I am just considering getting myself an Apple iPhone . so here we are … )

Yet who is really just into getting stuff cheaper does not have to travel to the U.S. necessarily. What I like at eBay from the very beginning, even before it got traction in the German market with its German site, was that it made the world definitely flatter. You could see products on their flagship .com-site, bid for them and if you were lucky, win. Yet, it became pretty clear that there were a few hick-ups: First. many dealers did not ship to an address outside of the U.S. and made that pretty clear from the beginning. For second, buying an exciting article in the “long tail” for $8.37 and then paying for shipping to Europe (provided the dealer would do it) some $60, not to mention the hassle with customs declaration, made the whole procedure thoroughly unrewarding.

Bonvu.com seems to narrow that gap by offering a solution to exactly that. You get an a shipping-address in the U.S. (Bonvu’s logistic centre), you can have you items inspected (including a picture which is sent to you), being stored for a while, getting bundled with other incoming shipments (huge benefit), made ready for customs clearance and finally being sent in one shipment to your home address in Europe. Great, isn’t it. Of course the company takes a fee for that service, but looking at their ratecard , the prices are absolutely reasonable.

I really like this sort of service, because a similar concept similar brought me 4 years ago to India. There is still so much potential to not just do such a service between the U.S. and Europe, but also between many other countries. And there is absolutely no reason why free people in a free world should support the artificial windfall profits of fat corporates based on inexplicable price differentiation.

8.13 AM

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Who has ever been in event management, knows how much effort it takes to get an event for 250 people rolling, especially if it takes 4 days.  And besides a perfect “organization” still make it feel natural and authentic so that everybody parts his way with a noble feeling of inspiration and enrichment. And that’s exactly what EO Bombay managed to put together in the last four days from Thursday to Sunday for the “Regional Integration Event” (RIE 2008) where all the chapters of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization meet annually. The entire picture set on Flickr is here.

 
One of the highlights was the “Bollywood-Night”, with a fashion show of India’s premier designer JJ Valaya. Here the video of the grand finale with the master himself briefly stepping on stage.

For the motto “Dream Big”, the speakers were absolutely outstanding and in the overall very complementary in what they had to convey. Shashi Ruia from Essar, estimated at a net worth of US-$ 10 bn made a good start, a bit like a father explaining in a very seasoned way to his children what matters, what to look for and what to avoid in business and in life generally.

Zia Mody, a prominent legal consultant and lawyer described what it takes for Indian companies to acquire companies abroad. Ms. Mody is known for her hard work and dryly began her presentation with “Sleep is for Sissies” :-) A panel discussion with industry captains from private equity have a good insight on the thought process and the nuances of the players in this field. 

For the most fascinating speaker, however, was the juvenile Sunjay Reddy from the infrastructure developer GVK, the company which on the bid on reforming the notorious Bombay Airport. More information on what it will be is here.

I have never seen a person in my life who has to put up which such piles of shit in his work from a hugely complex construction project in the first place to a community of slum dwellers to be relocated, to opposing populistic politicians to the Shiv Sena for displacing a sacred statue, and so on and so on. At in spite of all this, still remaining not just a good mood, but even spreading a contagious enthusiasm up to the point where he authentically and without irony speaks about “a dream I am following”. After his 90 minutes presentation we all got up and gave him what he deserved: standing ovations.

On Saturday morning after everybody had re-assembled from the previous night’s party with bollywood film producer Karan Johar, we eagerly listened to Dr R A Mashelkar’s “lecture” on “Innovation – to make the Impossible possible”. Undoubtedly a unique source of inspiration for the gentleman being India’s most recognized scientist who is also an advisor for the Prime Minister of India.

The later afternoon ended with an exciting ride on a speed boat in east in the bay of Bombay west from the Taj Mahal Hotel. And this was my favourite, our highly esteemed fellow member Takeshi Izuka fighting the wind and Mehool Bhuva coming to his help. Yep, we did not fall short of fun at all …

So thanks again to EO Bombay, spearheaded for the event by Javed Tapia and all his other fellow-members who put all their time and heart into making this generous hospitality happen.

5.58 PM

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„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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