Archive for the 'Offshoring' Category
“IT Product Conclave” in Bangalore: Moving Upscale
Recently I have reduced a little bit on my conference tourism, but didn’t want to miss the opportunity while being at home in Bangalore. On Monday and yesterday, there was the IT Product Conclave & Expo of the India’s formidable IT-association NASSCOM . Formidable for the reason as I have attended the NASSCOM Leadership Conference twice already which attracted speakers like Thomas Friedman, Amartya Sen or then India's President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam.
This was in the heydays of the industry which so far has relied entirely on services, this means running a business model which scales predominantly by adding more and more people based on - however sophisticated – labour arbitrage. As one of the forte's if the industry has evolved the capability for designing, building and maintaining e.g. a complex and specific system for a particular banking client. Obviously, as markets tend to gravitate towards efficiency, the realizable margin gets squeezed by the supply-side soaking up the available scarce talent. Moreover, macro-factors like the rising Rupee against the US-$ have added additional pressure on the profitability, not to mention the ugly “R-Word” (for recession) which is spooking around.
Things are not outright shitty nowadays, but the concern has been for quite some while where the growth will come from. Therefore, with some foresight, 4 years ago NASSCOM initiated an innovation agenda which got conceptually supported by Boston Consulting Group, addressing the question how to build industries which will sustain the next 20-25 years on a much wider canvas. One of the key conclusions was that “software products” would prove a path to higher value businesses than just army of “programming coolies” (old quote from Sharad Sharma, CEO Yahoo! R&D India). Products are ultimately the best way to “package, store and disseminate organizational knowledge”, as my fellow EO-member Atul Jalan from Manthan Software set forth. Moreover, as products implicate a more immediate level of competition, they foster stronger innovation which in turn is able to churn up better products which in turn will command a higher price. Here the Indian cost-advantage clearly plays into the hands of product-companies and can get a virtuous cycle started.
It is worthwhile taking a look at the current state of the Indian software product industry: In the FY 2008 it turned over US-$ 1.42 bn with a CAGR of 44 % within the last 3 years – (which is a 50 % higher growth rate that the much more mature older brother of “IT services”). Another good sign is that from the currently 370 software product companies in the Indian market, two-thirds have been incepted within the last three years. However, looking at how the revenues are distributed, there is a typical “long tail” or a power law (or as a proper German would say “a problem of justice” ;-) The Top 10 together aggregate 84 % of the market - and the rest of 360 companies, well, the rest.
Equally interesting is to take a step back to slice and dice what “software products” actually means. Not too surprisingly, as the Indian IT-industry has had extensive time to gain experience in the last 10 odd years, the clear focus lies in B2B-enterprise-applications within the following areas.
Interestingly my other major field of entrepreneurial activity, the B2C high-scale internet platforms do not show up here – or to put it the other way around NASSCOM does not categorize them here under products and/or does not feel that those fall under NASSCOM’s primary mentoring requirements. And I frankly don’t have a clue why this is as many of the abstract criteria used for “IT products” clearly apply also to portals, platform, social networks and the likes. Or NASSCOM has an incomprehensive view on that sector because e.g. “search engines” or “online search” are being named, likewise in another study “mobile games” morphing more generally speaking to “mobile applications”.
NASSCOM sees its role as a catalyst for achieving the BGAG (big hairy audacious goal) of catapulting the software product industry to a volume of something between US-$ 9 to 12 bn by 2015. The support of the organization would happen on multiple levels like exactly this and further conferences, providing best practises, incepting its own fund, but above all providing a shift in the hearts and minds of entrepreneurs to go the more difficult but more rewarding product route.
Finally, looking at markets, one true “paradigm shift” (I am really careful with this overused term) is taking place. In the first place, India as a domestic market in various sectors like Telecom or Retail is all of a sudden sufficiently big to get a software product to market. Moreover, the normal and necessary route for internationalization would have always led to the U.S. – This is no longer so. The Chinese market has proved to be a potential “next territory”, given a similar maturity of the industries into which to sell. And, last but not least, the Middle East. There, as IDG Ventures India CEO Sudhir Sethi explained “buyers feel much more comfortable buying security software from Indian vendors than from those based in the U.S. or Israel.”
8W8: Taking Globalization and the Internet to the next Level
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.
Guest at SeoFM.com in Munich: SEO-Outsourcing to India
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 …
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Inauguration by Kiran Shaw of “Teleradiology Solutions” (Bangalore)
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.”
Smoothing Climate in the Indian IT-Industry
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 … :-)
Global Citizenship on the Rise
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.
Thanks EO Mumbai for your Hospitality
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.
Platforms of a global Society
„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:
Virtual Personal Assistant in India
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.
Inspiring DLD Conference in Munich
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.
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