René Seifert – Entrepreneur & Global Citizen

It’s been the second event from Horasis (“The Global Visions Company”) that I attended, this time the Global Russia Business Meeting in Slovenia’s capital Ljubljana. As usual, the organizer Frank-Jürgen Richter was able to bring an amazing high-calibre crowd together. This platform provided a perfect global context in which Russia’s opportunities and challenges could appropriately be discussed.

Besides, me being half-Croatian, I passed through the ring-road of Ljubljana many times, but never found the time to have a look at the City itself. So this event gave me a good opportunity to make up for it and found the home-town of 280,000 inhabitants picturesque and lovely, exuding still some charm of the former Austrian K&K-monarchy from a time when it carried the name “Laibach”. (All the pictures here on this Flick-set.)

The event itself began with a reception, a “virtual ribbon cutting” (there was none :-) …

… , followed by a gala-dinner in the Union Hotel where among others the Prime Minister of Slovenia, Borut Pahur, spoke about Slovenia’s current challenges in the crisis, it’s firm integration in the European Union (yes, including its financial help for Greece, too) and naturally its relationship with Russia.

The conference itself was held the next day in Brdo Casle near Kranj which boasts the historic memories of the first encounter between then US-president George W. Bush and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in 2001.

The day started with a welcome address by the Slovenia Head of State, Danilo Türk, a former law professor and moreover accomplished top-diplomat which one could easily tell by his intelligent and rhetorically polished 20-minutes speech in English without the help of a single piece of paper.

The president set the stage for the issues which we discussed throughout the day:

• Russia has has come out of the crisis significantly better than the EU, with growth rates again in the range of 5 % compared to some 3 % in the Euro-zone.

• Europe and Russia should actively strive for a closer integration on the levels:
  • Free trade: Russia is still to join the Word Trade Organization (WTO), yet easier flow of goods should be facilitated
  • Security: Building a joint defense-architecture both for nuclear and conventional weapons
  • Visa: Easing the mutual access to visa or even letting go with the visa-regime altogether and deal with misuse on a robust case-by-case basis
• Russia’s strength being the energy-supplier for the rest of Europe is also its curse as the country’s welfare depends too much on the oil-price, whereas its economy lacks diversification into other sectors.
• The country is sitting on a demographic bomb with an even faster falling population that in western Europe. The programme for a women to receive EUR 8,000 from the state for the second child is not really bearing fruit.
• Lack of talent seems to be the biggest issue for companies. High unemployment, especially among young people, on the other hand is calling for a more effective education system which is supposed to teach modern management methods. So far corporate governance overall is stuck in archaic-hierarchic command & control-structures.
• Bureaucracy and extremely rigid labour laws are severe impediments for much needed flexibility.
• Summary: In spite of all the challenges, Europe and Russia should move closer together. Given the current state of the EU this is no longer an act of mercy. Rather, Europe should understand that it might even need Russia more than Russia needs Europe.

I was invited to speak on a panel about “Which strategies work best when trying to
break into foreign markets” and was sort of taking the perspective of the “I” in BRIC – which stands for the block of emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China.

So far Russia’s foreign direct investment (FDI) has understandably been directed more towards its own strategic industries in energy and natural resources, predominantly Europe. India as a target for e.g. company acquisitions hasn’t been to much on the radar. But if Russia takes its quest for more diversification seriously, India would definitely become an opportunity. Either as an attractive market for consumers which has to be addressed in quite a segmented way or of part of an integrated global process chain capitalizing on its vast talent pool at relatively low cost.

With plenty of remarks about the current state of the world economy the mood was almost something of fatalistic. “After the banking crisis we believed to be out of the worst; but now we have Greece and the ash-spitting volcano. Things have somehow become unpredictable”, said Cvetka Selšek, Chief Executive Officer from SKB (Slovenia). Or from another participant: “Everybody in the room listen: Be afraid of China. They know how to fix problems.” Or: “The western countries are the debtors, whereas the BRIC-countries are the creditors.” So much for the new world order.

My view of the current crisis of the Euro, the European Union as an institution and the highly indebted west in general is relatively sober. We should finally leave our old notions behind that every investment in Europe or the U.S. is a AAA-gold-nugget whereas the same into an emerging markets is systematically exposed to higher risk. Until recently I would have seconded this little insight: We are living in a world with lots of capital and no opportunities (west) and no capital and plenty of opportunities (emerging markets). However, looking at the growth dynamics of BRIC, today it’s more: Those combine capital with opportunities.

The west, by contrast, has successfully managed to get stuck in the worst intersection of this matrix.

7.01 AM

  Comments (2)

Trackback URL

Posted to English,Globalization,Language Selection

Even after 6 years of living in India, the subcontinent is full of surprises every day. Just one week of being here, countless of heartwarming, witty and inspiring stories. Starting in the here and now: I am sitting on a “laptop station” after security of Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi and blogging this post away. Really amazing where India has gotten with such a world class airport, working stations including free high-speed wireless internet (try to get that on a German airport).

It’s been quite a busy travelling week, so last Friday I have been at Cochin Airport where this instance caught my eye. In contrast to western economics where capital EXCHANGES labour for the sake of saving cost, the success formula in India seems to be capital PLUS labour.

In a congenial combination of man & machine the concept works like this: A customer steps forward to the apparatus and selects an item. The guy in the yellow T-Shirts takes his money and shovels it into the machine, the magazine drops down, the guy picks it up and hand it to the customer. Variation B: For bigger items, that’s even more hilarious, the guy collects the money, opens the door, grabs the article and hands it out. So basically as a customer you get the feeling that modern technology is still grounded by good old human service.

Some Indian ads are just involuntarily funny, I really wonder what rode the heavily metrosexual art director of coming up with this copy. It’s supposed to promote the speed of transfer as well breadth of shopping opportunities at Bangalore Airport.

Well, if I was that girl, I also wished that rather the teddybear be my father and not that guy with the gay moustache with the glossy lipstick beneath LOL

9.20 AM

  Comments (3)

Trackback URL

Posted to Bangalore,German,Globalization,India,Technology,Travel

After two months of fine-tuning and observation a fresh update: Things are advancing well in Vatsalya, the computers are in use, technology is working and the girls are happy :-) Moreover, from April onwards the training will be enhanced to five times a week by two teachers so that our joint efforts will reap the maximum benefit. These teachers will be paid for long-term by another sponsor, Larsen & Toubro, which Vatsalya was able to attract. Therefore I feel safe to say that by now we can declare the project for the goals we have defined successfully accomplished.

As mentioned in the last update from January, we invested EUR 220 into a new roof for the school patio which has been built and is giving shade to the little children during their school hours from the almost perpendicular sun of South India. Here is the official “Thank You-letter” from the organization:

Needless to say that I will regularly come by to Vatsalya and assist wherever I can. Thank you once again for your generous support so that we we were jointly able to make this worthwhile project happen.

6.06 PM

  Comment (1)

Trackback URL

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

After Shukla Bose’s inspiring talk at TED India in Novemer 2009, I finally managed today to follow her kind invitation to visit one of the four schools which she has set up in the last six years after the inception of Parikrma Foundation. Check out the website, it’s amazingly well executed, like everything else I have seen today at the tour of  the “Adobe Parikrma Centre For Learning”. (Here is the entire picture set.)

Given the top-notch organizational standard, one can tell that Shukla has spent a major part of her life in corporate life before she decided to do something that makes a true difference to others. Hence, the place is an amazing mix of high-quality education and dedication of its mostly volunteers as well as salaried full-time teachers. The right attitude for all involved seems of utmost importance for the organization.

“You can’t buy passion”, explains Shukla, and leads by example how focussed and loving she treats each and every of the children, ask them questions, answers the children’s questions back, encourages critical reasoning, a healthy portion of scepticism, gives them a hug and sometimes tender kiss on the cheek.

Most importantly, the children feel welcome at this place and encouraged to blossom. As normal as it sounds, it is not. These children have all one thing in common: They hail from very poor families, with an average income of Rs. 800/- (~ EUR 13) per month, and would without Parikrma at best see a school from the outside.

I really like the approach Shukla and her team are taking to their programme: Instead of describing problems and design solutions, they start from a desirable result: Enable children from an underprivileged background to attend college and work their way backwards to overcoming the roadblocks to the objective.

Besides an amazing curriculum which for example is able to teach children from ground zero English in three months, it includes most importantly the family background of the kids as well. It means integrating the parents into the process to convince them of the long term benefit of a good education (lower drop-out rates) to sending alcoholic fathers to therapies and have them afterwards build and run kitchens which feed all the children during school-hours.

After my great experience with our charity-project “Wipro Netbooks for Vatsalya” today’s visit was an eye-opener how something based on good intentions can scale into a significant changer of society like Parikrma. Shukla has in my impression done an amazing job in building a platform where new ideas and improvements are constantly absorbed, a platform which is open to the work of volunteers, some of them – which made it really sympathetic to me – guys with long hair and girls with tattoos (rather a rarity in India). These would be assigned to work in well crafted “modules”. Those can range from providing “slower” pupils a bit of teaching-tailwind within a programme of a few months to just have one educational lesson of 90 minutes on a relevant subject.

If you are interested in Parikrma, my fullest endorsement to donate or help. Here is how it works:

• Sponsoring one child per year including all expenses like books,  school-uniform, teachers’ salary to the partial rent: $500 per year
• Sponsoring a whole class where the donor will receive regular reports on the children’s progress: $15,000 per year (30 children with $500 each)
• Needless to mention, any amount of money is welcome.
• Volunteering, as described above, also with people from abroad is encouraged.

For all this, ideally visit Parikrma’s website where there is more information and even the possibility to donate online.

Thanks to Shukla and her team, keep up the amazing work and let’s keep in touch. I am sure there is something where we can work together in the future.

In fact it’s already one year ago, but were were asked by the founder to keep a low profile in terms of communication in order not to attract unnecessarily competition. When I say “we”, I mean the fine group of entrepreneurs and executives from MumbaiAngels which I had joined one and a half years ago.

A few weeks back, we got the green light that communication was free. So I wanted to post a few lines on the company, the founder and why I thought it was a good idea to invest. Reverse Logistics India (RLC) operates in a space which at the first glance does not appear as sexy as promising to build the next Facebook. But I have learned well from my entrepreneurial experience that such businesses can bear an amazing business potential in combination with very healthy margins and – unlike Facebook – really make money :-)

So what does RLC do? To provide a simple example: An Indian consumer buys a new mobile phone with one of the big retailers, after a few weeks well within the warranty-period the things breaks. What now? So far in India, for retailers unlike in the U.S. or Europe, the legal obligation to manage the scenario is just in the making and therefore the priority of installing a proper process rather low, whereby plenty of customers have been left behind dissatisfied. Or, the retailers did not know how design the process at all.

This is where RLC as the outsourced solution comes into place: Organizing this entire process end to end with both satisfying the customer and recouping value in mind. Concretely, the company would on behalf of the retailer handle the customer from communication, picking up the broken item from his home, delivering it to RLC’s delivery centre to finally inspecting it. The inspection can yield that the item has to be disposed of (within the legal framework of “e-waste” in India) or, if it can be repaired, resell it. Just a simple example with plenty of variations and different use-cases.

RLC, based out of Delhi, runs by now two additional operating centres out of Mumbai and Bangalore. I met the founder Hintendra Chaturvedi last year January in Delhi and was impressed by his vision how to occupy this under-served market in a big picture, yet at the same time keep a razor-sharp focus on getting traction in this extremely “execution-heavy” industry. Interestingly, Hitendra is one of these famous cases of “reverse brain drain”: He had been living in the U.S. for two decades or so, before he took an executive position to run the OEM-division of Microsoft India. There, he realized that this huge sphere of “reverse logistics” he had see in the U.S. did not exist on the subcontinent and decided to set-up his own company. Here, on LiveMint is a nicely written portrait about him along with a sound depiction of the reverse logistics-landscape in India.

We from MumbaiAngels were convinced both about the concept and the founder so that we decided to give it a go by providing the necessary seed-funding. Good to know that a year down the line, RLC has been building traction with several marquee-customers and Hitendra is step by step executing on his vision.

9.34 AM

  Comment (1)

Trackback URL

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

Came across this data-rich article on CNN Money which points at an increase of coupon distribution and usage in the United States. Interestingly, the surge is being explained with the economic crisis where savvy consumers are looking for a deal wherever they can get one.

Overall, the volume of aggregated coupon savings amounts to $600 millions more in the first 9 months of 2009 compared to the same period the year before, or in percent, a 30 % up. The merchants from their end seem to have understood luring new customers to their shops by increasing the distribution of such coupons by 41 %. More often than not, the economics of a such a voucher don’t pay off in the first place with zero or even a negative margin. However, if relationship building is done right, the customer lifetime value will allow for profitable amortization.

Not surprising, more and more of the coupon business is moving online, with Redplum being such a major aggregator. The convenience-factor for both the merchant and the customer is as unmatched as in all the other areas the internet has disrupted. In Germany, there are equally services springing up in the coupon space like www.paperball.de/gutscheine. The idea is simply explained: Present an overview of coupons of current vouchers, explain their benefit and guide the customer over to the merchant. Another example for such a service is blogmeier.de with “blog” meaning “blog” also in German language by now, whilst “Meier” being a very popular last name (like “Smith” in English :-)

My impression is that coupons are here to stay and that we will see more of them, especially at the crossroad of mobile, location awareness and your social network.

It’s been some 6 hours that I arrived at Infosys’ Campus in Mysore, the venue for the TED India conference. The campus is out of this world, when going through the gate “you are leaving the Indian sector” and it appears as neat as Disney World – although the Infosysians roaming around are way smarter ;-)

Obviously, I am no conference newbie. But every event has its own culture and my experience has been to look and watch in the first place, keep a bit of a low profile to understand the dos and don’ts and then fully immersing into the action. So far my first impression has been fantastic. You just start a conversation with anybody on where they come from, what they do or what interests them. What is a good thing – and I hate anything else – that the conversations are genuinely personal and nobody tries to “sell” himself, lest any product or service.

I guess one little anecdote illustrates my point quite well: When I took the bus back from the opening party to the campus, there was a slim Indian gentleman sitting there. I asked politely if the chair was vacant, he confirmed politely and we introduced each other by name: “Rama – René”. He made an extremely humble, maybe even slightly shy impression to me, and we started to talk in a real curious two-way conversation. After 3 minutes or so it turned out that this gentleman was Vilayanur Ramachandran, one of the leading neuroscientists of the world. He told me about his studies of the human brain with his approach to learn from deviant behaviour in a systematic way about the brain function and arrive to general conclusions for the ‘normal’ case. Rama held a talk today in the pre-conference programme; and here he is in a TED-talk of 2007.

We came then to some older studies of his where he looked at the function of humour which he explained in an amazing way of cultural evolution. But then we didn’t stay too long too theoretical and started to exchange hilarious jokes. One of them which the Professor told me is the sort of jokes I usually tell and I had to promise not spread it by giving “credit” to him. Promised.

As I mentioned Twitter, Rama said that he was registered, but didn’t understand if he had to admit people who follow him, what was public and what not. This was of course my little moment of glory where I could share my experience with the microblogging service and explain all open points. So my initial take: TED is predominantly about good, mutual conversations where a pinch of humour doesn’t do any harm either.

An amazing first evening, and I am really really looking forward to tomorrow, with Day 1 of the conference program. By the way, the entire Day 1 will be broadcast live online.

7.04 PM

  Comment (1)

Trackback URL

Posted to English,Globalization,India,Language Selection,Technology,Travel,Veritas,Whatsoever

We could only get here together. Today was with fullest honesty one of the happiest days of my life. When I started to conceive this project, I had a remote idea of how the picture of its accomplishment would look like. It would look like this.

All the pictures of the inauguration here on my Flickr-set. Today we solemnly celebrated in the traditional Indian way the inauguration of something new. This novelty felt like two well crafted pieces of a puzzle came together to form a harmonious whole. One the one side, the phenomenal preparation of the Vatsalya team with setting up the room, installing broadband internet connection and putting tables with chairs in place. From the other side the delivery and installation of the Wipro netbooks. Plug and play. And it just worked. Connected to the internet, connected to view through this window of the word. From Bangalore to anywhere. Therefore, to symbolize these limitless possibilities, I set Wikipedia in English as the home page on each of the 12 browsers.

We started out in the afternoon with some more technical installation by Sumanth and Arvind. Thanks for taking time out and supporting us with your technology expertise.

It was a special pleasure for me to have my good friend Dirk Schornstein back in Bangalore, also one of the donors for the charity, who couldn’t resist the call from his first visit in December last year when the girls told him for good bye “Come back, Uncle!”. He kept his promise and brought a present which the girls had wished for: The entire collection of Harry Potter in the children’s edition.

Indians truly understand how to elevate such an event onto a spiritual level so that it is perceived and will be remembered as something special. The girls started to get more and more exited …

… when at 4.30 pm we cut the ribbon …

… and lit the holy light with offerings to the God Ganesha, prayers and chanting by the children.

Then nothing could stop the girls, always in groups of 12, to sit down on the chair in front of the computers and put their little fingers for the first time in their lives onto the touchpads and see the pointer move on the screen in front of them. I will never forget their genuine joy and curiosity.

I am extremely happy to share these impressions with everybody who contributed to this project, dedicated money, time and moreover trust. In the hope not to forget anybody:

• The 28 donors around the world who laid the indispensable financial ground.
• The Vatsalya-team, my dear neighbour and almost sister Shashi as well as the entire board of the association who relentlessly pushed ahead from their side.
• Wipro for the generous discount of the netbooks and its exemplary professionalism and reliability in each and every step of the process.
• Petra (=”Petzi”) who did invaluable research work with project coordination along with her husband Jürgen.
• And last, but not least, the 50 girls from the Vatsalya Children’s Home. Your yearning for a future provided me the momentum forward.

To all of you: This is your day. Thank you.

4.34 PM

  Comments (4)

Trackback URL

Posted to Bangalore,Books,English,Globalization,India,Language Selection,Media,Orphanage

Things are starting to fall into place. Today, I am happy to give you an update on a project and gladly include a host of “thank yous” and acknowledgements into a variety of directions which brought us significantly further. As things often go, especially in India, being connected to the right people can make a lot of things happen.

Let me start with proposing the budget allocation for the project. In the beginning I was a bit naive to just think of raising funds only for the computers, whereas there is a whole underlying infrastructure layer beneath in order to create a real functioning “solution”. Hence, the plan is to spend the donations as follows:

UPS, by the way is the abbreviation for “Uninterrupted Power Supply”, a connected battery system to bridge the frequent power outages in Bangalore. (The spreadshirt above is also live here on Google Docs, select the link “Budgeting” on top of the page.)

As we see, there are some EUR 250 left which we plan to use prudently for some unexpected cost. Either use it for funding another year of broadband internet or as the basis for additional computers once this first solution is in a steady state. Nothing will be wasted to unnecessary expense. Promised.

Now to address with greatest happiness the bricks which have fortunately built upon each other to form the emerging building of our solution:

• During the “Global India Business Meeting” in June this year in Munich I got to know Mr. Girish Paranjpe, the Co-CEO of the India IT-giant Wipro. I presented our project to him via e-mail and asked if Wipro would be willing to support it with a reduced rate compared to the regular retailing price. As a professional and successful organisation like Wipro works, I got a fast response from Girish. Moreover, a generally positive one along with passing the project on to his colleagues Mr. Ashok Tripathy and Mr. Sankar Pitchaiya. Therefore, I am super-happy to announce that Wipro will deliver its netbook “Wipro e.go 7F3800” to us beginning of October at a special charity rate.
  The notebook contains a couple of cool cutting-edge innovative features. Also: With it comes full- fledged solution with an established customer care-backbone in case of ever anything breaks. Thank you so much, gentlemen from Wipro, for supporting us!
• Horst Joepen, CEO of Searchmetrics, and former co-founder of Webwasher (later aquired by McAfee), referred me to his former colleague Martin Stecher who granted us a free test-license for the Webwasher. This piece of software is supposed to filter out that sort of stuff from the web which girls between 5 and 15 years need not get in touch with. Thank you very much indeed for your support.
• I love technology, but I never claimed to be an engineer. So in order to get the IT-infrastructure in the orphanage up and running with setting up a client-server architecture, installing the Webwasher, connecting it to the internet, Sumanth Sudheendra is volunteering us to take this into his precious and experienced technology-hands. Thanks Sumanth for allocating your free time for the good cause.
• Last but not least, the Vatsalya Orphanage has also been active to set the ground for the advent of the computers. As I just talked to my neighbour Shashi on Saturday: The required fast DSL-broaband internet-connection has been installed by the provider BSNL at a flat-rate. Also, the simple furnishing with tables and chairs is about to arrive these days. Thanks for following up so promptly on all these action items!

Overall, things are looking good at this stage and I am very optimistic. What is going to happen next: We are looking at October 7th as the delivery date for the computers which we will connect and make operational as fast as possible. I will keep you posted.

And once more: Sincere thanks everybody for your support for making this happen :-)

12.13 PM

  Comment (1)

Trackback URL

Posted to Bangalore,English,Globalization,India,Language Selection,Orphanage,Technology