René Seifert - Entrepreneur & Global Citizen

Although its already back more than three weks, just didn’t want to give this post a miss, got really busy after this fabulous short (too short) break. So with help from my ghost writer here goes… :-)

Take-off from Bangalore Airport (Bengaluru) which earlier in the day had its inauguration opening, the flight to Bangkok (=City of Angels) turned out to be the second flight to leave BIALA in a historic moment for me as an avid pilot. Celebrating the inauguration I spontaneously decided to sing my favourite song there because the passage of "Kentucky Fried Chicken" symbolizes through its movement of wings the transformational force which humanity has undergone through the rise of general aviation - LOL

An impressive achievement from this private-public venture. Surprisingly all went relatively smoothly, Thai Airways had to wait for the Indian flight to touch soil on the new runway. Understandably a matter of honour. Finally landed early morning in Bangkok, greeted by a man in a uniform, turned out to be the driver from Mandarin Oriental …

 … where later in the evening we got to see this firework from our hotel room with a view on the Chao Praya-River.

Women, such details turn them into little girls :-) The days flew with meeting friends, clubbing, shopping, spa and delicious FOOD.

Two places to recommend Vertigo at Banyan Tree 61 floors above Bangkok, "vely lomantic".

And thanks to friends an insiders tip, an experience out of this world is the Seafood  Market & Restaurant. where you buy all your ingredients from veg to fresh fish and then place everything in your trolley, check-out, sit down and the cook takes everything and prepares your menu. A feast for all senses.

Ah, the couples spa package at Mandarin was a lovely experience but honestly, the local “SERIOUS” Thai massages are still the best!

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.  

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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Posted to Business, English, Globalization, Innovation, 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.”

Just registered for the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco end of April. I was there last year and although some sessions tend to be lengthy and masturbative, overall I liked the workshop and "hands-on" approach. So I decided to go again this year. Who is there as well, please let me know to catch up. 

Apart from that I just checked out a service which is not entirely new, but still in closed Alpha, Loic LeMeur's Seesmic , a crossroad of Twitter & YouTube. I guess this is the best description for it. And it's really nice and somehow with lots of unassuming Flash-elements something like "Web 3.0". A conversational platform, asynchronous where most members just sit in front of their computer and speak some statement into the webcam. I started off with something about Castro stepping back from power in Cuba. 

Others can reply so that a thread would evolve. What is smart: One can once enter one's Twitter access data and distribute every new post into that channel, too. I really like the ease of the service where it becomes immediately clear what to watch, what to do and how to join the conversation. And ultimately, one can rehearse a statement as often as desired before putting it really live. The only thing I was missing so far was the possibility to distribute the video e.g. in a blog by embedding it, at the moment really everything happens (apart from the Twitter-twist) in a world within. But maybe that's why it's actually called "Closed Alpha" :-)

„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.

Even after returning from "down under" in Australia, I was a bit "down under" with my blogging. But today is a good opportunity to come back to light after an amazing 3 day DLD-Conference in Munich which ended yesterday. On the eLAB-Blog, I wrote a bit more on it, especially about 23andMe, a "Web 2.0 genetics" company which was showcased. The mix of the panels and participants was phenomenal which such high-calibres like Craig Venter, Paolo Coelho, Martha Steward or Marissa Meyer being around. Lots of extremely networking opportunity by talking to a whole lot of extremely smart, positive and energetic people. My photo-set of the event is here.

This year, I was not just a participant, but felt very honoured when Rupert Schäfer , die producer of the DLD; asked me if I wanted to moderate the India-Panel on Monday morning. I guess it was a real sucess with my two guests Farokh Balsara, partner at Ernst & Young India, and Vishal Gondal , founder & CEO of Indiagames and a friend whom I've known for 2 years by now. Here a picture of us two after the panel. 

We had a good conversation about the major differences in India compared to "the west" in terms of demographics, media consumption, pick-up of mobile usage and on the other hand some insights how to enter the Indian market in the role of an entrepreneur or a manager in charge. Both guests had lots to say especiall as they were coming from quite a complementary background. Here is also a brief video with the first 2 minutes about this India panel.

From the feedback I got the audience really liked it and I feel India should be way more promoted in Europe. Thus, I also talked to Loic LeMeur and we found it a good idea to work on an India panel at his conference LeWeb in December. Let's keep the fingers crossed that it works out, would be really cool.