B the CEO of ur life!!!

ONE of the most precious gifts we can give ourselves and to each other is a sense of empowerment. A sense of power over yourself and immediate surroundings. Imagine what a wonderful feeling that would give you. To wake up rejuvenated each morning and feel on top of the world because you are in control of your day and whatever happens to you. There is a unique joy and celebration in that! Real happiness can come only from within. When you wake up each morning, consider if you really want to be doing what you are scheduled to do that day. If the answer is ‘no' more often than ‘yes', there is something obviously very wrong somewhere. You are not celebrating yourself or the gift of life enough. Ask, are you at peace within? Have you resolved the inherent conflict in all of us, the constant struggle between the baser and higher consciousness? Once you strike a balance within, it is easier to transfer that feeling of peace to your life as well. When the joy of doing what you want to do suffuses your life, you will feel an extra bounce in your step and a keener power of observation, a deeper understanding of what's within and what surrounds you. It is then that you will question all that you have accepted blindly so far. You will question prevailing wisdom, bust old paradigms,challenge social conventions and assumptions. You will learn to believe in yourself and develop your own perspective on life. You will assert your own sovereignty. Your life will be filled with love, bliss, light, inspiration and positivity. You will learn to do the unexpected, to think big, think lateral, think mosaic! Let us together move towards higher levels of fearlessness and creativity. Let us look at life more for opportunities than constraints. Let us keep shedding limitations and keep raising the bar. Each one of us can be the CEO of his or her own life!

(Source:ET dated 08th May 2010..COSMIC UPLINK)

MNCs in Rural India - Good article (WSJ)

A "symbiotic relationship" is how Sanjeev Chadha, chairman and CEO of PepsiCo India, describes the work that the food and beverage multinational undertakes with thousands of farmers across India. "We help them with progressive farming techniques and they are of huge benefit to us in securing a reliable supply chain," he says. Some observers would call what Pepsi is doing corporate social responsibility (CSR); others more cynically might say it's simply another example of multinational corporations (MNCs) trying to figure out how to make inroads in India's challenging, but potentially lucrative rural market.

Whatever the words used by executives like Chadha for such initiatives, it is impossible to discuss multinational strategies in rural India without mentioning CSR. In its various forms, it is a critical part of their rural growth plans, often out of sheer necessity. Filling the gaps left by government, MNCs have built roads in rural India that help them deliver their goods, provided education and health care for communities whose workforces they rely upon, and implemented environmental programs to protect precious natural resources needed to keep supply chains running smoothly.

"In some cases, I am sure CSR activities are mostly rhetoric," says Harbir Singh, Wharton management professor and co-author of a new book titled, The India Way: How India's Top Business Leaders Are Revolutionizing Management. "But CSR is more legitimate in India than in the U.S., where infrastructure has been built and government is seen as addressing societal development agendas."

AFP/Getty Images

File photo of a villager drinking a soda in Madhuranthagam village, some 75 kms south of Madras, April 23, 2004. AFP/Getty Images

Yet now there's a shift in how MNCs look at their entire rural India investments beyond CSR. With growth drying up in developed markets and their center of gravity shifting to emerging markets, MNC businesses in India are under pressure to prove that their rural strategies aren't just about doing well from a CSR perspective. They also need to show head office that these strategies are doing well from a business perspective. In short, the strategies must start delivering top- and bottom-line results.

After years of false starts, missed opportunities and flawed strategies, a number of MNCs' India businesses are getting close. Others already are there and are ramping up their rural investments. None can take that fine balance between doing good and doing business for granted, as Nokia, Coca-Cola and Max New York Life -- among the companies profiled in this special report -- show. And it's for that reason that at PepsiCo India, "our rural agenda has been driven by purpose and now is moving into performance," says Chadha.

Spending Power

For many MNCs, there's a lot more riding on their rural India performance than there once was as India's growth story spreads to the heartland. Two-thirds of the country's one billion consumers live in rural India, where almost half of the national income is generated. A report by Technopak Consultants and the Confederation of Indian Industries, a trade body, estimates that the country's rural consumer market generated US$425 billion of revenue, up from US$266 billion the previous year.

The big reason for the growth is that India's rural consumers are steadily gaining more spending power. The number of rural households earning less than US$760 a year is down from 65% to 24% since 1993, while those with an income of US$1,525 have more than doubled from 22% to 46%. Combine these factors with improved roads and other infrastructure in rural India to help products reach their markets, and it's easy to see rural India's attraction.

Special Report

The Wall Street Journal and India Knowledge@Wharton present a special report on Multinational Corporations and Rural India. This reader resource combines specially-commissioned material with recent articles and more from our archives. Click here to read all.

"We are finally beginning to see that rural India has cash and is able to spend at the same time," says Vijay Govindarajan, professor of international business at Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, who is also the chief innovation consultant for General Electric. "This is a remarkable combination for companies."

But any company coming to India for the first time that thinks it will be easy to take advantage of that combination is mistaken. Rural India is hugely complex, not least because of its diverse pace of development. As a recent study from IMRB International, a research company in Mumbai, notes, some markets are big but not as affluent as other markets (Uttar, Bihar Pradesh) while some are affluent but not very large (Himachal Pradesh, Goa). Experts also say that strategies need to take into account the vast number of languages and cultural differences across India's hinterland, while keeping strategies highly flexible and adaptable.

It can mean developing products and services tailored specifically to the rural market. When LG entered India in the mid-1990s, numerous brands were vying for shelf space with hardly anything to distinguish them from competitors. The South Korean company developed two color television sets for the rural market, Sampoorna (which means "complete" in Hindi) and Cine Plus. At US$65 and US$107 respectively, the sets were priced slightly higher than the black-and-white televisions that other manufacturers were selling in rural markets and that had become obsolete in urban homes. LG was also the first to offer gaming with its cut-price TVs and menus in English and Hindi. Now LG has refrigerators, washing machines and microwave ovens targeted at price-sensitive consumers sold from hundreds of retail and distributor outlets across the hinterland, with rural markets contributing 40% of its revenue.

Much also depends on the sector and products sold. In fast-moving consumer goods, for example, MNC products are capturing a sizable portion of rural consumer spending in a number of areas, with year-on-year increases in rural spending in 2009 on MNC shampoos (70%), washing powder (60%) and toothpaste (112%), say researchers at IMRB. What's more, they say, the average spending on these products is growing faster in rural than in urban markets.

Soap Operas

In the course of ramping up the performance of their rural strategies, MNCs are applying the lessons already learned. One of those lessons is that the benefits of a first-mover advantage are tough to hang on to as rural Indian consumers' tastes change rapidly, with questionable brand loyalty.

That applies even to a groundbreaker like Hindustan Unilever Ltd. (HUL), the country's largest consumer-products company owned by Anglo-Dutch Unilever. It made waves in the hinterland in 2001 when its Shakti Project enlisted self-help groups to develop a network of women -- largely from very low-income households -- into entrepreneurs, selling baskets of HUL products door to door. Today, 42,000 women earn a living by selling HUL products in more than 100,000 villages in 15 states. "India's rural narrative has been defined by HUL," notes Pradeep Lokhande, founder of Rural Relations, a Pune-based consumer-relationship management organization.

In the meantime, HUL has embraced other novel distribution strategies, such as selling products like its Sunsilk and Clinic shampoos in small, inexpensive packets for low-income Indians in the hinterland with little spare cash. Thanks to those efforts, the company has one of the most extensive distribution networks in the country, with 6.3 million retail outlets, including one million that it services directly. Rural India currently accounts for nearly half of HUL's revenue.

But HUL's lead regularly comes under threat. In December, for example, rival MNC Procter & Gamble launched Tide Naturals, which is a 30% cheaper version of its Tide detergent targeted at rural consumers -- a global first for the Cincinnati-based MNC. The launch was part of the parent company's "purpose-inspired growth strategy" to "touch and improve more consumers' lives in more parts of the world." Within weeks of its launch, Tide Naturals shook up India's US$8 billion detergent market by clinching a 0.6% share of the market, according to AC Nielsen.

HUL's response has been to turn to a local court to contest P&G's use of the word "naturals" to promote its new product. With neither side backing down, the case continues.

While other MNCs aren't necessarily going to be airing their competitive grievances in court, they can expect fast, nimble competitors to take them by surprise and grab market share if they don't stay close to their customers -- which is no small feat in a country like India, which has 642,000 villages, some with populations as low as 500.

'Uncharted Water'

Nowhere is that more evident than in mobile telephony. Mobile phone penetration in India jumped from 1.4 units per 100 people in 1995 to 51 units currently. In the 12 months to September 2009, the number of mobile subscribers increased 55% to 142 million, according to the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of India.

Taking a lead in that growth has been Nokia, the US$55 billion Finnish mobile handset maker, which is one of the companies profiled in this special report. As part of a global emerging market focus since 2006, rural India now accounts for 40% of Nokia India's US$5 billion annual revenue. But it's a crowded business to be in. Along with Samsung, LG, Sony Ericsson and Motorola, there are a number of handset makers not only from China selling cut-price handsets, but also from India's home-grown companies that are chipping away at Nokia's market share lead with hand sets that are cheaper, more practical or both.

Now Nokia, like other handset makers, is branching out and forging alliances with various partners to offer mobile banking and other services along with its handsets. "It's uncharted water" -- as Gerald Faulhaber, a business and public policy professor at Wharton, puts it -- one in which "customers are pushing the companies and taking them out of the comfort zone."

Doing so successfully requires one thing: "listen to people," states Karishma Kiri, a Seattle-based strategy and product management consultant at The K2 Group, who was a director of Microsoft's Unlimited Potential initiative which provides computers, software and IT training in emerging markets. "A lot of companies tend not to listen to [what] rural consumers say they need."

That's not as clear-cut as MNCs might think. The jury is still out on the mobile services launched by news agency Reuters last year and other service providers to deliver agriculture information to farmers' mobile phone. According to Rural Relations' Lokhande, the demand hasn't been strong. "There's a perception mismatch between the farmers and the service provider," he notes. While the companies assert that the service is useful, affordable and personalized, many farmers figure they can get daily rates from their state agriculture marketing boards for two cents, or half the price.

In rural areas, finding the magic price points that don't eat into margins yet boost volume is an ongoing battle, with a lot hinging on distribution. "We have to build, and are building much deeper 'go-to-market' systems in rural India. They have to be extremely cost-efficient, much more so than they are in the urban areas," says PepsiCo's Chadha.

The US$43.2 billion MNC has been in India for more than 20 years and now claims to have overtaken Nestle as the top food and beverage company in the country. Overall, India has indeed been treating the company well, even during the downturn. India revenue at its drinks business grew 40% last year, while volume jumped 32%, well outpacing most other countries in PepsiCo's portfolio.

But it's not resting easy. Last year, it invested US$200 million -- the most ever in any single year -- as part of a US$500 million plan to expand its distribution infrastructure, while increasing R&D and adding four new plants to the 45 it already has in the country.

To make those investments pay off, rural India -- which currently accounts for 20% of PepsiCo India's business -- is taking center stage. "Over the next 10 years, I see rural India forming 40% to 50% of our national business, and in the future, growth will be powered by the rural areas," says Chadha.

Is that a long time to wait? "If any company wants [quick] financial results from the rural initiative, it is seriously mistaken," says Tuck's Govindarajan. "You have to look at the next decade and not the next quarter."

K2 Group's Kiri agrees. "The rural incubation work of multinationals is part of their business," she says. "But they need to be less focused on [year-on-year] success and spend more energy on building innovative solutions and business models for this segment. It's a long haul.

Ministry tightens noose on retailers

The corporate affairs ministry is tightening the noose around retail companies a sector which has been left largely untracked due to the absence of a designated sectoral regulator.

According to government sources, distressed retail company Subhiksha Trading Services has committed multiple violations of the Companies Act, 1956, for which the penalties can be anywhere from imprisonment of up to two years to fine up to Rs 2 lakh and above.

The list of company law violations by the company is endless. These include sections 209, 292, 210, 211, 215, 193 and 628 that deal with maintaining balance sheets and profit and loss account, compiling minutes of the proceedings of the general meeting and authentication of balance sheets and profit and loss accounts by directors of the company.

The findings compiled by Registrar of Companies (RoC) Madras will be sent to minister of corporate affairs Salman Khurshid. The RoC is expected to initiate proceedings to nail the company officials. The case, however, is already pending with the Madras High Court that has imposed a stay order for one month.

Meanwhile, the corporate affairs ministry has also directed RoC to look into books of accounts of another retail giant - Vishal Retail.

"Prima-facie, we have evidence of account manipulation by the company. So we have directed RoC to look into the matter under section 209 of the Act," a government source said.

Following the closure of 1,600 retail units of Subhiksha, a petition was filed in the Madras High Court against the company. The petition was filed by one of the company's lenders Kotak Mahindra Bank (KOTAKBANK.NS : 740.95 -5.5), which wanted to recover its dues amounting to Rs 40 crore.

Subhiksha's second-largest stakeholder, ICICI (ICICIBANK.NS : 899.75 -3.9) Venture Funds Management Co Ltd, has alleged in the past that the management of the retail company had denied other stakeholders, access to the financial details of the company.

The company's debt burden is around Rs 750 crore and is seeking cash infusion of around Rs 300 crore to restart its business. The company is looking to restructure its debts in a phased manner. A text message sent to R Subramanian, managing director of Subhiksha Trading Services went unanswered.

From NBC: ‘The Office’ Meets ‘Slumdog Millionaire’

When it comes to television comedy involving Indians, the British usually do it first and do it better than the Americans.

British television execs seem to be more optimistic that audiences there will like oddball ideas – in fact the odder the better – and because of longstanding cultural ties and the large population of Indians and Pakistanis in Britain, they’ve even been open to oddball ideas from them. And it can’t hurt to have funding from fees that are mandatory for all television owners.

Which is why it was possible for a comedy sketch show like BBC’s “Goodness Gracious Me,” full of insider jokes about Indian culture (though they did poke fun at the English too), to become a mainstream hit in Britain in the late ’90s. The show’s title was a nod to the many English turns-of-phrase that Indians have kept in circulation long past their sell-by date.

Anyone remember Indian Bridegroom Detective? When there’s a problem to be dealt with, he goes into a phonebooth and comes out in full wedding regalia complete with strands of flowers falling from his turban over his eyes, before galloping off on a white horse. Another character always insisted that everything good in the world comes from India. If pressed hard, most Indians would admit to knowing at least one person in real life like that:

Two of the show’s actors, Meera Syal and Sanjeev Bhaskar, went on to create another extremely popular show out of a set of characters from “Goodness Gracious Me”: “The Kumars at No. 42,” first broadcast in 2001.

Now the United States is thinking about bringing the Indian call center to mainstream television audiences in America, according to this report by the Wall Street Journal’s Amy Chozick. NBC executives are working on a pilot for a show called “Outsourced,” described as “The Office” meets “Slumdog Millionaire.” It stars Broadway actor Ben Rappaport and a mostly Indian cast.

NBC might want to look at how ITV’s “Mumbai Calling” (British, again) played out. Set in a Mumbai call center called Teknobable, it starred the ubiquitous Mr. Bhaskar and Nitin Ganatra, who had a bit role (but a funny one) as the Indian version of Mr. Collins in the so-bad-it’s-hilarious 2004 film “Bride and Prejudice.” The British Comedy Guide said the 2007 pilot had promise but the full show was very different and did not do well. If the call center comedy doesn’t work for an audience that joyfully embraced the Kumars, it’s not likely the U.S. can do much better.

The U.S. tried to bring the “Kumars at No. 42″ to America but not with an Indian family. Instead it featured an ethnic group that occupies the sort of place in America that Indians and Pakistanis do in Britain. We’re guessing “The Ortegas” were Mexican from this report at Latino Standup, which says the show never actually aired. Maybe it was for the best. Remember the American version of “Men Behaving Badly”?

It’s not that America can’t do humor – Jon Stewart and the fake news contingent are proof of that. But good ethnic humor, not so much. As for Indians doing humor about Indians, we’ve heard that’s still a work in progress too. Or at least that’s what Indian stand-up comedians say.

The Slum Dog and the Millionaire

What makes contrasts in India so gripping is that they are on such a monumental scale.

A pair of costly designer shoes adorns a well-to-do person’s feet next to someone walking barefoot in the scorching heat; a private gated community with manicured lawns is situated next to a shanty dwelling that serves it; or expensive meals created by celebrity chefs are enjoyed at fancy restaurants while yet another farmer commits suicide because he is unable to cover his debts.

Very often these experiences take place within moments, and meters, of each other. Unlike in China, where the poor in general are kept away from city centers and live under the watchful eye of an authoritarian state, in India they often co-exist, pressed against each other, cheek by jowl. This is contemporary India: the concurrence of wealth and abject poverty.

In contrast to the West, this distinction stands out much more starkly in India because of the extremes between the situations. While India’s growth races forward, the ones left behind are very much visible in the rear view mirror. With apologies to the Oscar-winning movie, it is a case of “slumdog” and “millionaire.”

Widening income inequality in this country is very much a part of its growth story, as it has been in all rapidly growing economies throughout history. The old cliché that it’s because the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer is not the true story.

While the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting richer too, but not as fast, so the gap continues to widen. It is worthwhile mentioning economist Simon Kuznets, after whom the famous “Kuznets curve” is named. This postulates that income inequality is low in poor countries, rises with income as economic development proceeds apace, comes to a peak, and finally begins to fall as income rises yet further.

The most widely used measure of income inequality is the Gini coefficient, a number ranging from zero to one, where zero denotes perfect equality and one perfect inequality. According to UN estimates, the Gini coefficient in India is approximately 0.36. By contrast, China’s is 0.47, Brazil’s is 0.61, and Russia’s is 0.40. The average in rich countries is around 0.30 or so.

While these numbers might suggest India is a more equitable society, we should actually expect inequality in India to rise as rapid economic growth rates lead to a catch-up in levels of economic development with the other fast-growing emerging economies. It is only when India becomes a richer and more mature economy, many years in the future, when the full fruits of the so-called “trickle-down effect” — the notion that prosperity will reach people at the bottom of the economic pyramid — will be realized. As of today, 450 million people in India live below the poverty line, without sufficient access to food, health, and education.

This narrative in India has parallels in other major emerging market countries, most notably Brazil and South Africa, both democracies like India. In both of these countries, inequality has fuelled social strife, including a large increase in violent crimes such as murder, robbery, car-jacking, and drug-related crimes in the major cities. Rich residents of Sao Paolo or Johannesburg rely on private security to keep them safe, and sometimes even this is not enough.

This begs the question: is this what the future holds in store for India? What I have in mind here is not just an increase in crime but the possibility that ever-widening disparities have the potential to destabilize the very fabric of Indian society. While many Indians might consider this far-fetched, let us not forget the Maoist insurgency.

Many observers, including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, cite the Maoist threat as the nation’s most serious internal security challenge. The Maoist guerrillas’ most recent attack was on a convoy in Chattisgarh in which they killed 76 paramilitary policemen, making it one of the worst attacks since the start of the insurgency in the eastern hinterland of the country. The uprising is widely blamed on social deprivation and the low level of economic development in this region.

There is a body of economic research that attempts to correlate inequality with social ills such as crime and corruption, accounting for other factors such as the level of economic development. While such studies are never conclusive, they provide some evidence of a positive relationship: in other words, where inequality is higher and other things are equal, there is a greater incidence of social ills. As any economist will tell you, correlation does not imply causation; but this macroeconomic evidence is at the very least suggestive.

The evidence from economics and from other emerging economies seems to suggest the likelihood of increasing inequality and therefore worsening social tensions as the Indian economy continues to grow. It is small comfort to know that, according to Kuznets, these problems will eventually disappear when we finally become a mature economy. But in the intervening years, until that happens, we ignore this threat at our peril.

News Hub: BP's Charm Offensive

News Hub: BP's Charm Offensive

BP moves aggressively to counter damage to its corporate image stemming from the Gulf blowout. WSJ's Neil King joins the News Hub to discuss.

http://online.wsj.com/video/news-hub-bp-charm-offensive/637653F7-564C-4769-9F68-BD449365EB98.html

RIL buys into Deccan 360 to bolster logistics support for retail chain

RIL buys into Deccan 360 to bolster logistics support for retail chain

By fe Bureau

Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries (RELIANCE.NS : 1084.25 -6.45) (RIL) on Friday said it has stepped into the aviation space as a "strategic investor" by picking up over 26% stake in Captain GS Gopinath-founded cargo airline, Deccan 360.

Though both the companies did not quantify the investment, reports speculated the deal to be in the $20 million-$30 million range (Rs 90 crore to Rs 130 crore). RIL's stake would be 'over 26% but below 50%'.

RIL said one of its wholly-owned subsidiaries would provide the growth capital for the new cargo airline, though it did not name the subsidiary. The investment will help RIL secure a logistics support to its retail network. Reliance Retail Ltd, an arm of RIL, operates 900 stores in 80 cities across 14 states in India, according to the company's annual report of March 2009. Although Reliance Retail operates stores across various retail segments, the air cargo foray would specially help the company in its perishables business that it runs through the 'Reliance Fresh' brand of stores.

Perishables have to be transported across cities without time lapse, and the company can keep its costs under control by operating its own cargo flights rather than lease out other aircraft. Most of the aircraft available on lease are old and are fuel-guzzlers, calling for high operating costs. On the other hand, buying a new aircraft can be expensive, and the delivery would take at least three years. Significantly, among the assets of Deccan 360 are 60 warehouses spread across various cities.

In a statement, RIL's chairman and managing director Mukesh Ambani said, "We believe that our collaboration with Deccan 360 will see a transformation in the logistics domain in India."

The company further said that RIL's investment would help Deccan 360 increase its air and surface network coverage across the country. RIL's share dipped 0.64% to close the day at Rs 1,083.30 on the Bombay Stock Exchange (^BSESN : 17591.18 -48.08) on Friday.

Gopinath, who founded the low-cost airline Air Deccan in 2003, but subsequently sold it to Vijay Mallya-led Kingfisher Airlines in 2007, said, "We want to make it clear that it is not a share sale. We would rather say they (RIL) have invested in the company via a fresh issue and RIL would have two nominees on Deccan 360's five-member board of directors." Gopinath launched Deccan 360 in 2009 with its hub in Nagpur.

Deccan 360 has an employee strength of 300, and a network of 60 franchises with an additional workforce of 1,500. It is present in 50 cities and would expand to 100 cities in the next 12-18 month, Gopinath said. The air freight business in India has grown 10% by volume in the first three quarters of 2009-10, year-on-year, according to government data.