Gurgaon

Since around a week I am in Gurgaon, the technology capital of North India. Some quick observations:

1. Gurgaon is DLF. DLF is Gurgaon. They have built the whole freakin' township. Everything else is just support and built after that.
2. The public transport cannot be called worse than anywhere else in India. Because it doesn't EXIST.
3. Well ok, that was an overstatement. But really, there are no buses. The Gurgaon metro is still being built. The Delhi metro just extends till HUDA city center and is the only saving grace. Auto rickshaw wallahs are robbers.
4. Delhi is not that far off, thanks to the Delhi metro's extension. I have no idea how Delhites coped before the metro. Seriously. Cars, I believe.

Couldn't see the famed T3 at the Delhi airport. Perhaps when I take off from here..

End of First year

Section E on "Black Day"

Tomorrow is the last day of classes in my first year here at WIMWI. I never thought I would say this, but here it is: I am going to miss it. Very much.

The beauty sections and the groups at WIMWI is they enable us to come so close so quickly. As my good friend put it, we have  "pulled each other's legs, argued with each other, put night-outs and studied together, lived through moments of joy and distress". I don't think I have been through as much or learnt so much anytime else as I have in these 10 months here at the WIMIWI. 

The emphasis here is the speed at which things unfold here. It was just yesterday that I entered this place, and now the already tucchas are leaving, leaving us to be the new tucchas. Time for the goodbyes. Time for the 'last __ ' . I bid all the seniors farewell and the very best in life.

And yes, Section E rocks. The hell out of this place.

Air travel in India

My boarding passes from September 2010 to March 2011

I was just going through my photos folder and found the above photo tucked away in the 'photos from mobile phone' folder. I remembered why I had taken the photo earlier - it was because I was surprised how many times I had to travel by air within that span of a few months, and for reasons mostly not related to my work.

Air travel in India has increased in leaps and bounds barring a few hiccups, which were triggered mainly by the recession. Being a consumer for this product, I can now easily see the value that it provides to people like me. It is fast, reliable and largely efficient service(ease of booking tickets) which is affordable. The major change in the last decade has been on the reliability and the affordability front. Entry to private players and the resulting competition ensured that services were more varied, networks more widespread and prices driven down. At the same time the income levels of the burgeoning Indian middle class increased. All this coupled with the IT boom and the large scale migration of white collar workers resulted in large volume sales for the airlines.

From the boarding passes in the above pic, no guess for which airline is my favorite. Indigo has been awarded multiple times as the  best performer with respect to punctuality, offers some of the lowest prices while keeping their service quality very decent. No wonder it is one of the very few (probably the only one) that is actually making money in the Indian domestic aviation business. 

This post brings me on the fringes of e-commerce in India. It is an interesting topic which I would like to post something about soon.

Currently favorite song: Kagaz ki Kashti

IIM Express

IIM Express: Rickshaw sporting a jazzy sign

It has been a hectic two and half months to say the least. As I again glanced over some survival pointers that my brother and his friend gave me before I came here,  I realized how much sense they make. 

176 Lectures of 75 minutes each, 15 exams, 20 company presentations, 30 quizzes and innumerable cases and assignments.  I never thought I could attend so many lectures on a trot. This place made me get up and do it. 

 Its a mad mad world out here.

How to crack the CAT and get into the IIMs!

I am going here!

Ok, so as you might have heard, my efforts of the past 3 years have born fruit; and I have been offered admission to the prestigious WIMWI, better known as IIM Ahmedabad. Now that I am on the other side of the fence, I can start writing cheeky posts with  subjects like this about how I made it :P

The below lines are taken as is from an email that I wrote to a junior some days back.

1. Check out this site http://www.handakafunda.com/ . It’s a good starting point for CAT preparation. It has good (and free) videos on topics in quant and DI, and the download sections has old CAT questions arranged topic wise.

2. Join TIME/CL/IMS and give their mock tests religiously. It is very important to track your performance throughout the year and analyze each performance. Identify your weakness and strengths.

I personally felt that CL’s papers were the best in terms of closeness to the actual CAT, and I would recommend it to you. But at the same time, I would also strongly recommend TIME, simply because a LARGE number of people give TIME’s mocks, and you will get a better estimate of your percentile here. Your actual CAT percentile will generally be a few percentile points more than what you generally score in the mocks.

3. Keep reading the newspaper daily, and a magazine or two once in a while. This will not only keep you updated of current affairs, but will also be helpful for you in Verbal. Read Hindu/Business Standard/Mint/IndiaToday/Outlook. Don’t read TOI. Try to read online editions of TIME/Economist.

4. Don’t get disheartened by low scores in mocks, or get overly elated by a good score. Consistency is the key. Your mock percentiles will give you a realistic expectation from the CAT.

5. Understand that CAT can be unpredictable, and that all you can do is give your best and leave the rest.

6. Respect the CAT. Not because it’s a flawless exam, or that it’s a fair one (I feel it is quite flawed and luck plays some role). But respect it because what it represents. It represents the aspirations, ambitions and the hopes of a quarter million people. Don’t take it lightly, or for granted. You might be brilliant, but CAT can screw you. You will have to work hard to crack it.

7. Give all the other exams –FMS, IIFT, XAT (and JMET & SNAP if you want to). You might only want to go to the IIMs, but these exams will make you stronger, and if you get called for interviews, its always good to give as many of them as possible. Finally if you convert, you can even join one. They all are excellent institutes in their own right.

8. Practice practice practice. Try to find some friends who share this common goal with you and study together. 

That sums up my advice on the CAT as an exam. Maybe a post later on the interview prep.

Current favorite song: Aaj din Chadeya from Love aaj kal

We are the champions!

India wins the Cricket world cup after an excruciating wait of 28 years.

Non-Indians will perhaps not understand how much this means to an average Indian. Only the sport of cricket has the power to transcend the boundaries of religion, caste, language, politics and class in India. Winning the world cup has brought back this sense of nationalistic pride which is perhaps the greatest takeaway from the last 6 weeks for the country. One could find ample evidence of this on the streets of villages, towns and cities throughout the length and breadth of India at midnight yesterday; where jubilant crowds shouted slogans and waved Indian flags, hi-fiving and hugging strangers and soaking in the occasion.

Of course speculations will be there about match fixing and theories of how it was all just a farce. Ya right. Like they can put up such a good show pre-decided. They would have had to be better than the best actors humankind has ever produced to put on such a show match after match. Be proud that India is at the top of some sport atleast.

Phew!

The last fortnight went really quick and really slow at the same time. I had to give six interviews in the span of some ten days for admissions to b-schools across the country. Interestingly, I found out that the worst part about giving interviews is not the interview itself, but the wait outside the interview room!

Hoping to get through some colleges :fingers crossed.

Meanwhile, iPad 2 has been launched. Mototrola Xoom and RIM Playbook are to be here soon, I am crazily addicted to my berry, and to some extent my Thinkpad too.

Current favorite song: Dil Ibadat from the movie Tum Mile. What a beautiful song!

Being a 'Bangalorean'

One thing that hit me yesterday is that I am a Bangalorean now. At least in part. And the worst thing about it is the name itself - 'Bangalorean'. I am not impressed. Compare it with 'Mumbaikar', 'Hyderabadi', 'Madrasi' and 'Amritsari'. Don't they sound so much more desi and appealing?

Here are some reasons why I consider myself a Bangalorean in part:

1. People ask me directions. And I am able to give them!
2. I can carry out a full conversation in Kannada. Ok, so what if its just an answer like 'gotilla' (don't know) :P
3. I know numbers from 1-10 in Kannada, so I don't need to ask the bus conductor to repeat in Hindi/English when he asks for change.
4. I am no longer appalled at the exorbitant rates charged by the auto wallahs. Yes, I call them autos, not rickshaws.

How to you sell Ipods in rural areas?

I was asked precisely this question during one of my mock interviews.

Take a minute, there is no hurry, i was told. And the target was to sell 50 ipods of Rs 2500 each, with a marketing budget of 1 lakh. Hmm. So how do I do it?

I thought on it and answered on the following lines:

1.  Ipods = rich young chaps, probably some rich farmers kids with some amount of disposable money at least.  They probably own a cell phone already maybe using it for their music needs. So this was the target market.

2. Price & place? Not much innovation here, since the selling price and Maharashtrian rural market is already mentioned. Maybe give them some discount and advertise this.

3. Promotion. This is where I was stuck. I had no clue how to go about spreading the message in far flung rural areas, with just a few people in each village willing to even think about this product. I said something on the lines of telephonic ads, local newspaper/magazine pamphlets etc. Maybe hiring salesmen after making a list of potential buyers. The panel wasn't convinced :-(

And again, I thought whether really a marketing budget (1 lakh) about 80% of the expected revenue (1.25 lakh) ? Perhaps it might be when they are entering the market initially to gain a foothold and alter consumer mindset. But I don't really see the point of selling Ipods in rural Maharashtra - its not sustainable, and that is why its not done today. I should maybe have mentioned this to the panel.

I urgently need a crash course on marketing now. How to sell products from different sectors (FMCG, technology, services etc) in different markets (urban, semi-urban, rural) to different demographic profiles (men,women, youth, middle aged people, old people, rich people, middle class) etc.

Dada! Gonna call you soon.

On humans

The lazybum that I am, I am just re pasting my comment here on my brother's blogpost here.

"You are absolutely correct about the average longevity of humans being the prime reason why humans evolved this way. If a person expected to die at the age of 30, it made sense to procreate at the age of 15 so that by the time he dies, his child would procreate and the cycle continues. Mental, societal and economical considerations of having children were non-existent. And not to forget, there was no contraception.

It is only in the last 400 years or so that man has turned nature on its head and extended human life by leaps and bound - but that ratio of the age of death and age of procreation remains roughly the same - 60: 30

Of course people now easily cross 60, so we have lots of grandparents :-)

Coming to think of it, humans have screwed around with nature, controlled and used it to such an extent that we might just end up destroying ourselves. (environment, nuclear hazards, biochemical hazards) "

Dhobi Ghat

Film Poster - Dhobi Ghat

Another quick post on another movie I saw recently.

Dhobi Ghat is a movie about four people who have come to Mumbai for different reasons, from different socio-economic backgrounds and are somehow linked to each other through their actions. Aamir Khan plays a brooding painter, who mostly keeps to himself and is inspired by seemingly mundane things. Then there is an NRI female, who is in Mumbai to spend her vacations, and ends up in a one night stand with Aamir. Consequently they part ways the next morning, with no hard feelings on either side. Prateik Babbar is a dhobi and a wannabe actor who serves both these individuals, and is another link between the two. Aamir moves into an apartment which was previously occupied by a newly wedded muslim lady. It turns out that she has videotaped parts of her life in Mumbai so that her brother can see it as a diary. These tapes are found by Aamir.

The backdrop of the film is a very vivid and in-your-face Mumbai, which gives a very real feel to it. The interactions between the characters are handled very well and don't seem contrived. Prateik has played his role excellently and his facial expresssions and body language fit perfectly in his character. Overall its a very good production.

The only low point of the movie is its ending. Somehow one feels that the ending is left hanging and there is a feel of incompleteness to the whole affair. Some people might like it to be open-ended as it is, but I personally would have liked it to give something more for the audience. 

My verdict would be to wait for the DVD when it comes.

No One Killed Jessica

Film Poster - No One Killed Jessica

Quick post about a film I saw recently:

I saw the film "No One killed Jessica" around a week ago. I would give it 3 and a half stars out of 5. It s a well made movie. It does not bore you, tries to bring out the evil in our society but without being preachy about it. Both the lead actresses have done a good job - one who is a journalist and other is the sister of Jessica, the person who is killed in cold blood.The starting song 'Delhi' is currently stuck in my head.

The Blackberry : A short review

The Blackberry Curve 8900

Recently I have been using the Blackberry smart phones. I used the Curve 8320 for around 3 months, and now I am in the possession of a sleek and sexy Curve 8900.

I would say that Blackberry is not just a phone, but a way of life. I am surprised how quickly I am addicted to my berry. I have almost stopped checking my mails on the computer, because before they appear there, they pop up on my berry. SMS, MMS, Net browsing, GPS, Facebook, Twitter - I use all the services through Blackberry Internet services from airtel.

Even with such a scenario, I wouldn't recommend blackberry to others, simple because they are not worth the money they come for. Compared to other phones in the price range, blackberries are mediocre at best. The OS crashes quite often compared to android, more like windows XP. The camera is mediocre, media features are mediocre, and the battery life is average. The only feature that is really, I mean REALLY great about the phone is the push email service. There is simply no match!

As you can see in my last post, that blogging via email works! And you can know when I do that since you will be able to see 'Sent from BlackBerry® on Airtel ' :-)

Blogging from my mobile

Am writing this blog post from my mobile, a sexy Curve 8900 newly in my possession,.while on a ride back home in the company cab. I have Blackberry internet services enabled on it, and I think if I send an email to a particular address, it will be directly published as a post.

If you are able to read this, then it has worked!
More about my shiny new toy (and the Blackberry experience in general) later.
Sent from BlackBerry® on Airtel

Happy new year 2011

First of all, let me wish all of you a very happy year ahead!

I am back to Bangalore after an eventful week in Mumbai. Back to office, back to work. Quite some things changed in my life in the past week: some for the worse, some for the better. I hope in the long term I will be happy for the past 10 days.

I must admit that the year didn't start of well, the shocker of a XAT being the first of several lows. Comments of the paper ranged from a simple 'It was the toughest paper ever..' to creative ones like 'XATack!', 'XATom Bomb!' and 'Even Rajnikanth would have struggled :O'. Really, with the extremely high level of paper that was set (with differential marking and an ambiguous marking scheme), and the resulting luck factor that inevitably creeps in, one tends to question the rationale behind such a paper. I respected the XAT for their impeccable papers and flawless conduction of the exam till now, but this year was a disappointment to say the least.

The CAT on the other hand was literally out of the bag this year. What seems to have happened was for some time on 2nd Jan and 3rd Jan, the CAT 2010 results could be accessed by providing the year 2010 credentials on the google cached page of the CAT 2009 result page. Apparently the results were being uploaded, and some innovative students found out a way to access the same. The data (photo, address, date of test) etc is accurate, the percentiles and scores are consistent, mostly being as expected by the candidates. So it does seem the the CAT authorities goofed up. Meanwhile the CAT convener has done a Kalmadi and outright denied any leak, stating categorically that since the results were not uploaded at all, the students could not have possibly accessed them. I have a feeling the esteemed professor is a little behind the times when it comes to understanding how the technology, the web and databases work. But come on, at least accept that it was a mistake: perhaps the data is wrong, but how can the photos and address be wrong? 

And they teach business ethics!

The Notion Ink Adam

Love them or hate them, but you cannot ignore Apple's products. The Ipod, Iphone and the Ipad have not just become iconic products of this decade, but have redefined the industry and become synonymous with the product itself. I wouldn't be exaggerating if I say music player = iPod and tablet = iPad. Apple has die hard fanboys, who swear by its products and have an almost blind adoration for the  person largely behind them, Steve Jobs. Few companies or people evoke such strong emotions or reactions as Apple and Steve jobs.

Your Electronic Life as Apple sees it!

After the spectacular success of the Ipad, it is natural that other companies want to have their share of the 'tablet' pie. But competing with the likes of Apple is no mean task, though lots of companies have tried, and failed (Zune, anyone?). Interestingly Google has succeeded quite a bit in arresting the Iphone's free-rise, by developing the android mobile platform, and giving it away, for free! Android is already the dominant smartphone platform in recently sold devices, and 2nd in place behind the symbian considering all existing smartphone devices.

Smartphone market - all devices,  end of 2010. Source: Gartner, via Wikipedia

Google could do it because they have the resources, and the engineers to take Apple head on. But have you heard about the company Notion Ink? It is a Bangalore based company started by a bunch of IITians and some MBAs and have developed the Adam tablet. It has a lot of features which Ipad ignored; like Flash, USB ports, multitasking (runs Android), a Camera (swiveling one at that) and HDMI ports. Its screen is better (Pixel Qi), the battery lasts longer and it arguably has a better processor (the Nvidia Tegra 250). And did I mention its cheaper? Seems too good to be true, doesn't it?

The Notion Ink ADAM - a first of its kind (as claimed by the company)

The company did have its fair share of troubles, as you would expect of a penniless start-up trying to take on the might of the majors. Their investors walked out on them some months ago, and reportedly their new investors are Reliance, one of the biggest conglomerates of India. They had demoed the tablet almost a year back at the CES 2010, but took almost a year to reach production quality. The company was highly secretive about its features, specifications and did not reveal true pictures of the tablet, releasing instead only mock-ups through the blog maintained by the company's CEO, Rohan Shravan (link). This lead to suspicion amongst the tech bloggers and community at large with some going so far as to call it vaporware. 

Rohan retaliated by posting videos of the tablet in action, one video per day, which ended all doubts and speculation about the existence of the product at least. The pre-orders have already sold out. The tablet no doubt looks promising, the only worry I (and most analysts) have is whether the Adam and the company itself can live up to the hype. Meeting huge production deadlines, customer support, logistics, feature development, rolling out updates, all these can take a toll on the company. The CEO seems to be a smart person, but I only hope the company won't be a victim of its own success.

I hope for the sake of the tablet market and the Indian tech industry, the Notion Ink be a stupendous success. Wish them all the best!

In Mumbai

As tradition has it, I am back in Mumbai for this year's Christmas - New year festive season. For the 6th year in a row, I am spending this time of the year in Mumbai. Four years of my college and two years of working, I was never at home during Diwali or Holi, or Ganesh Chaturthi for that matter, but I am always here during Christmas and New Year; simply because I have had holidays every single time.

As I look back over the years, I realize how much I have changed. Christmas time gives me a fixed point, some sort of rigidity to the timeline of my life, where I can look back and recollect over my last year. At the same time last year, I was thinking vastly different things, my priorities were different. As I said in some earlier post and repeat it here, life changes.

For the last three years now, all I was doing this vacation was preparing for the XAT, and I must do the same now this year too. Wish me luck!

Two of my pics from Seoul below:

Me at City Hall Subway Station, Seoul

Me at Namdaemun Market, Seoul

Wish you a very happy new year!

Seoul Curry

 

 Seoul - Infinitely yours

Recently I had been to South Korea, one of the four 'Asian tigers'. Specifically, I had been to the very live and bustling city of Seoul, the place where the Miracle on the Han river took place. This event refers to the phenomenal economic success of the Seoul city in particular, and South Korea in general in the last 3-4 decades.  It is a story of the epic rise of a country from being war-ravaged  in the 1950s to becoming an awe inspiring, sky touching, electronics producing giant. A GDP growth chart is suffice to astonish us with the sheer growth rate and consistency with which South Korea has recorded its economic growth.

South Korea's GDP (PPP) Growth from 1911 to 2010 - Source Wikipedia

I was in Seoul for almost one and a half months, working for a Korean customer mainly to initiate them about our product and set up their development environment. I lived in a hotel for the first week and then moved to a service apartment for the remainder of my stay. The service apartment was compact and clean, had a double bed, TV, AC, heating, kitchenette with a fridge, hot plates and microwave. I had a very high speed internet connection, which I (ab)used thoroughly :P. 

Its surprising that living in a different country actually taught me more about my country, as I could contrast the two countries quite nicely. I saw India in a new light, and am glad for this that I went to South Korea. I say this because at one point in time there was a significant chance of me not going.

I am listing some random observations about Seoul below, in no particular order, just as they come to my head now. Its been more than a month since I am back.

1. Seoul is a very clean city by Indian standards. Most notably, no candy wrappers, empty guthka packets, paan spits, or paper and plastic junk. However, cigarette butts abound. 
2. Almost every adult male smokes. Heavily. Not good at all.
3. Almost every adult male drinks. Most are moderate drinkers. South Korea has one of the the highest per capita drinking rates in the world .
4. Surprisingly, I hardly found anyone fat in Korea, leave aside obese.
5. The complete city is very handicap-friendly. All the pavements have inclines, all staircases have elevators. Even foot over bridges.
6. The Seoul subway system is very extensive, covering ALL parts of the city as well as the satellite towns and outskirts.It is the dire need of the hour for all Indian metropolitan cities to have such a system. Only New Delhi to some extent can claim to have such a metro. Mumbai has a fast and efficient 'local' train system but its stretched beyond limits.
7. Bus system in Seoul is also very good. Buses are segregated according to the route length and area and marked with different colours accordingly.
8. Even with a good bus system, its very difficult for a foreigner to use it because of the lack of English signs on the bus and bus stops. I couldn't make head or tail of which bus to take to go where. The subway though has excellent navigational facilities for the English speakers.
9. As obvious from the previous point, proficiency in English is lacking severely throughout the country. Most people can actually read the English alphabet, but struggle to coin together a complete and grammatically correct sentence. Thankfully, everywhere Arabic numbers are used, so its not a problem at the checkout counter of the local supermarket.
10. Hong Kong and Incheon airports are way too cool. India doesn't have a  single airport that can match up to either of the airports.

A long and rambling post comes to an end.  My current favourite song - 'Tu Jaane Na (Unplugged)' from the movie Ajab Prem ki Gazab Kahani. Artist - Kailash Kher.

 

Sau gram Zindagi

While on the bus the other day, I passed a spot where an accident had taken place. Usually most people stand up and crane their neck to get a glimpse of the scene. I am not one of them. I am sensitive in this sense, preferring  to move on rather than have a disturbing image affixed in my brain. Probably some poor guy must be lying in a pool of blood with many parts of the body broken and writhing in pain, or worse, dead. One split second before the accident, all was well and then Bang! His life just changed forever.

This just underscores how fickle life is. We fret and fiddle and plan and arrange, and then just out of the blue  everything changes. All that we think changes. All plans change. Life changes. This does not mean we should not think about our future - that would be plain stupid. I just want to say how, in particular cases, the best laid plan can go awry.

In case you are wondering if I am smoking pot, be assured that I ain't doing no such thing. Its just that I saw the movie Guzaarish some days back. The protagonist in the film is a magician who is afflicted with paraplegia after a complex magic trick goes horribly wrong. He spends the next 14 years on a bed, cared for by his devoted nurse, guided by his able doctor, and hosting a radio show. He becomes the inspiration of thousands through his show, and is considered a survivor and a winner. And then one fine day he requests his lawyer to file an euthanasia plea in court. Initially nobody understands why he does this, as everybody feels that he is not a person to do such a thing. But as the movie progresses, we understand his motivation, and are able to empathize with him. The lower court rejects his plea, but  they appeal to a higher court. I will not give out the ending here - but will say that its poignant and moving.

I particularly like the song 'Sau gram zindagi' from this movie. I take the liberty to copy the lyrics of the first stanza here:

 Thodi si meethi hai
Zara si mirchi hai
Sau gram zindagi yeh
Sambhaal ke kharchi hai

You can listen to it online here

Wireless in Windows

Am I connected or not?

One of the frustrating things about using Windows is, surprising as it may seem, having to deal with problems involving wi-fi. It would appear that using Windows would at least guarantee a pain-free, hassle free experience with wireless drivers. But Alas! It is not so. Nowadays I can safely declare that any Ubuntu (rather any Linux} box outperforms Windows with regards to just about everything - including driver support.

And if just dealing with problems is not enough, there are those confounding messages that as Windows users one must inevitably encounter. Just the other day, I was having some problems connecting to a network, and above is a screenshot of the screen that I was presented with after fiddling around for some time. Now what in the world am I supposed to infer from this? Is some kind of cruel joke being played on my by some bored Microsoft programmer? Poor me (and the legions of other Windows users out there).