TrivCap India OpEd Almanac

Chart: 5 year Rolling Returns Including Dividends

2012-05-27T05:53:58Z

Subra of Subramoney.com mentioned in my Sensex Roling Returns post that if we account for dividends, returns may look much better. So I took the Nifty Total Returns Index, which includes reinvestment of dividends, and gives you a picture.

Remember, the 5 year returns without dividends (okay, for the Sensex, not the Nifty) are like this:

Dividends do add a percentage point or two, and that can make the return attractive. Still, the five year at 4.55% doesn't look very exciting.

(All returns are annualized)

On John Cheever, 'The Dante Of The Cocktail Hour'

2012-05-27T04:45:00Z

The next instalment of my column for New Delhi's The Sunday Guardian.

An Indian city’s suburbs are, typically, squalid, overcrowded areas inhabited by those who can’t afford to live closer to the city’s centre. The notion of a suburb is very different elsewhere, particularly on America’s eastern seaboard, where they’ve been viewed as havens of homogeneity, places to move to when one has children, picket-fenced dwellings from where middle-management men in grey flannel suits emerged to commute to and from offices in the city. As John Cheever wrote in a 1960 piece for Esquirejust before his own move to Westchester, “My God, the suburbs! They encircled the city’s boundaries like enemy territory, and we thought of them as a loss of privacy, a cesspool of conformity and a life of indescribable dreariness in some split-level village where the place-name appeared in the New York Times only when some bored housewife blew off her head with a shotgun”.

Cheever, whose 100th birth anniversary is this week, captured the malaise of suburban life like no other. Though he wrote five novels – of the last, Colm Toibin said, “If you ignore the upbeat, cheesy ending, Falconer is the best Russian novel in the English language” -- it’s his short stories that Cheever is remembered for. He was to influence others such as John Updike, and Matt Weiner, creator of Mad Men, has cited him as well as Richard Yates as inspirations for the show. (In the first season, Don and Betty Draper live on Bullet Park Road, a reference to a Cheever novel.) In a 1992 episode of Seinfeld, George Costanza’s to-be wife discovers a cache of amorous letters written by Cheever to her father, and in the same year there was a commercial for Levi’s directed by Tarsem Singh that was a take-off on ‘The Swimmer’, one of Cheever’s best stories, earlier made into a 1968 film starring Burt Lancaster.

Like that story, the others possess an autumnal melancholy akin to what Orhan Pamuk referred to as huzun in his book on Istanbul. The titles themselves are revealing: ‘O City of Broken Dreams’, ‘Torch Song’, ‘The Season of Divorce’, ‘The Sorrows of Gin’. Most are set in the 1950s, that period of American promise after World War Two and before Vietnam. Cheever satirises and sometimes mythologises the lives of men who are anxious not to betray their potential, drinking too much, conducting casual affairs, observing their wives and children with an equal mixture of pride and helplessness. Sunday evening shadows lengthen over the lawn in the suburb of Shady Hill as they brood over disagreements and disappointments, trying to rise above them by attending one party too many. Not for nothing was Cheever referred to as “the Dante of the cocktail hour”.

As a repressed homosexual in a loveless marriage for most of his life – as well as an alcoholic – Cheever’s treatment of women in his fiction is problematic, a charge also levelled against other writers of his time. They stay at home; they shop; they exchange gossip; and, when they aren’t tender objects of desire, can be vain and demanding. It’s not as easy as calling Cheever a misogynist; rather, most of his women – in ‘A Country Husband’, for instance – exist to valorize or oppress the men. At the other end of the scale, in stories such as ‘Reunion’, ‘The Five Forty Eight’ and ‘Goodbye My Brother’, is Cheever’s consummate ability to portray the anxiety beneath the artifice in sonorous, graceful sentences that are, in Hanif Kureishi’s words, “intelligent and resonant, poetic and ineffable”. Cheever himself once wrote, “The constants that I look for are a love of light and a determination to trace some moral chain of being”.

In one of his early stories, ‘The Enormous Radio’, a couple in a Sutton Place apartment finds that their radio has the ability to pick up the conversations of others in their building. All is revealed to them: bitterness, jealousy, heartbreak and the difficulty of keeping up appearances. In the same manner, Cheever was able to tune in to the frequency of quiet desperation and broadcast its voice to the rest of us.

In Greeneland

2012-05-27T04:36:00Z

This appeared in today's DNA.

THE MAN WITHIN MY HEAD Pico Iyer

It’s not often that a writer composes a book-length homage to another. Offhand, one can recall Nicholson Baker’s quirky U and I, about his fixation with John Updike; Geoff Dyer’s Out of Sheer Rage, about his attempts to grapple with the life of D.H. Lawrence; and, more recently, Tom Grimes’ Mentor, about his relationship with Frank Conroy, erstwhile director of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Typically, such work is designed to reveal as much about the writer as the person being written about, and this is also the case with Pico Iyer’s new book, The Man within My Head, a meditation on Graham Greene. (The clever title is a take on Greene’s first novel, The Man Within.)

In his autobiography of his early years, A Sort of Life, Greene writes that part of the motive that made him a novelist was the “desire to reduce a chaos of experience to some sort of order”. In The Man within My Head, Iyer tries to impose order on his experiences of travel and early life by examining them through the prism of his relationship with Greene’s work. As such, it’s not a book that one can easily slot into pre-fabricated categories of memoir, travel or literary criticism. In a loosely-overlapping series of intensely personal chapters, he explores the question: “Was it only through another that I could begin to get at myself?”

Thus, this is no Norman Sherry-like obsessive quest; the focus is internal. As Iyer says to a friend, “I’m interested in the things that lived inside him. His terrors and obsessions. Not the life, as it were, but what it touched off in the rest of us”. With Greene installed as his “adoptive father”, Iyer is also free to also talk of his actual father: the early signs of brilliance in Mumbai, the move to Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship and the final shift to California. Iyer himself would spend many of his growing years between England and America, no doubt planting the seeds of his interest in geographical displacement, and what it does to a person.

While travelling to places such as Sri Lanka, Ethiopia, Bolivia, Vietnam, Mexico and Cuba, Iyer sounds a note of self-analysis again and again: “Freed from usual routine and small talk, I was away from the sense that I had to play a role, or to choose one self over another; I could find what lay at the heart of me, my core….” He dreams of meeting Greene, writes obsessively, grafts his fictional characters onto the people he meets and, on occasion, visits the locations that Greene himself went to.

In pensive passages, Iyer points out how Greene deftly escapes easy categories of being a “Catholic” or “English” writer; besides, he states that his reaction to the novels is more visceral than reductionist. The inability to slot the novelist is brought out more than once: “Sometimes Greene called his books ‘entertainments’, but they were always shot through with a sense of sadness and being lost; the ones he called novels often had scenes of such riotous misunderstanding and knockabout poignancy that professors would refuse to take them seriously”. At times, though, Iyer can skirt dangerously close to the woolly: “All Greene’s books are, deep down, about the shaking of the heart and not the body”. (By way of contrast, one thinks of Colm Toibin’s always-trenchant assessments of writers’ relationships with their families in his recent collection of essays, How to Kill Your Mother.

At its best, Iyer’s analysis of Greene’s flawed heroes in novels such as The Quiet American and Our Man in Havana is sensitive and intelligent, and his accounts of interactions with his parents are affecting and poignant. It turns out that this act of paying homage to another writer and exploring the nature of kinship – both genetic and elective – enables him to be more revealing about himself than ever before.

The "Quality of Talent" Debate

2012-05-26T10:42:52Z

An Open Letter to India's Graduating Classes from a KPMG partner is both eye-opening and outrage-inducing. He talks about how our graduating students are hardly prepared for the real world in terms of skills, problem solving ability, learning new things and being really professional. With very notable exceptions I cannot but agree; in general, there is an overall sense of entitlement, a lot of job-hopping and resume-shopping, a questionable work-ethic or a lack of "professionalism". It is difficult to find the right attitude and aptitude in the same person, and the cost-benefit equation can be exceptionally skewed. Some people price themselves out of the market.

But please note that these large type of companies are also to blame. Those that demand longer hours "when required" tend to be those that demand longer hours all the time, unless you have an emergency that your house is on fire and you can actually smell the smoke on the phone. Those that pretend to a potential customer that they are skilled in a certain technology, and then beg an independent consultant who actually does have that skill to sit in a conference call pretending to be a long-term employee. Then those that double-bill their clients on the number of hours worked because, well because they can. Those financial service companies and banks that tell their managers to lie outright to their customers, even if they are old and widowed and all that. The lala companies where you are expected to be a boss's man-friday. Those that refuse to give you your gratuity or PF benefits when you leave, or create unnecessary delays of months or years. And those that expect loyalty from you while, at the same time, giving a newcomer a salary twice yours as a "market" figure while he contributes far lesser than you. I'm sure you can think of more.

Everyone can rant and rave. Butevery dog has his day. Today, certain people are in demand. Tomorrow, unless they upgrade their skills, they won't be. Today just a large company's name is enough to get people to join it. Tomorrow, even they will have to grin and be proper employers to get the quality people they want. For years, new chartered accountants had no option but to work at salaries like Rs. 5,000 per month as an "apprentice" at large CA firms, working 18 hours a day, 7 days a week. Today they can get 5 times that much at newer firms and IT companies, and the old CA firms crib and crib and crib. Times change. People change, or get left behind.

I have, early in my career, taken Rs. 30 as auto fare as a reimbursement when I actually travelled by bus. I haven't job hopped (how do you do that as an entrepreneur?) but I've hired those who did (which in a way is my fault). I'm definitely inconsistent, being arbitrary when I wanted and demanding fairness otherwise. I hope I've changed, but it sometimes took an exiting employee to help me. I'll probably be both an employee and employer in the future. And I hope people (including me!) will change for the better, that companies will be better places to work.

A Sense Of Humor

2012-05-26T00:29:22Z

There is an idea about a sense of humor, which I have rarely seen in communities other than Indian. Be it said that most Indians do not adhere to this idea of what constitutes humor but most of those who adhere to this idea of humor seem to be Indian.

“I just love the way you give directions – Go straaaight! Turn left – the longer the straight goes on, the longer I have to go before I turn left”

That, said in an appropriate tone and to a friend, is meant as a joke. If the friend takes offence, it would not really be out of place to accuse him of lacking a sense of humor.

A sense of humor, to me, is the ability to laugh at one’s own idiosyncrasies. If you can laugh only when someone else is the butt of the jokes then your sense of humor may legitimately be considered to be deficient. Your laughing at those jokes is merely because you feel superior to the person who is the butt of the jokes and not a shared amusement at the foibles of humankind.

“Go straaaaaaaight! Turn Left? Dude, don’t you know a better way of indicating the distance for which I have to go straight other than this? It sounds horrid”

This may or may not be a joke to the recipient although I would not be particularly surprised if the recipient got angry about it. The moment someone starts adversely judging your foibles I’d consider him as bordering on insulting. Of course, depending on the length of your relationship and your idea of his personality, you could still laugh it off.

“Go straaaaaaaight! Turn Left? Dude, don’t you tamilians know a better way of indicating the distance for which I have to go straight other than this? It sounds horrid”

I am afraid that from this point onwards, it stops being a joke and starts becoming an insult. I may have a right to accept a value judgment about my own foibles as a joke but the moment someone plasters it across my community it ceases to be a one.

Rarely have I found people around the world accepting derogatory jokes about their community or their nation lying down. In fact, when someone is seen to laugh at such a joke when his community is the butt of the jokes, far from lauding him for his sense of humor his compatriot tends to look down on his lack of self respect. In India, however, insults dressed in humor can get passed off as jokes and you would even find people decrying the lack of your sense of humor if you got offended by any such statement. Any statement becomes racist the moment it generalizes about an entire community and is derogatory.

Let me reiterate the fact that if someone pulls my leg about my foibles or even addresses it to the entire community I belong to it can still be a joke as long as there is no inherent sub-text about others’ idiosyncrasies being better than mine. The moment the comment places my idiosyncrasies as being inferior to that of others, it becomes an insult. The very fact that the person felt free to make a derogatory joke about my community to my face either tells me that he thinks that I dare not take offence or that I have little sense of belonging to my community. If it was a thoughtless statement and I laugh it off, he would think either of the two going forth. I have found very few people who can respect someone trying to disassociate himself from his origins.

Self-deprecating humor, to my mind, is something that communicates, “I am not all that superior. I have my faults” and not one which revels in its inferiority. Whoever sold that bill of goods about a sense of humor making it necessary for you to swallow insults, merely because it is dressed up nicely, was a very good snake-oil salesman and, it seems, that his best customers came from India.

I have never had any use for snake-oil!

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Tweeting to Havana

2012-05-25T16:07:00Z

In the end, I don’t really know how to interpret what I saw

Sensex Rolling 5Y Returns at 2.21%

2012-05-25T08:55:26Z

The rolling returns for the Sensex (suitably annualized) are in the graph below:

Read this as: At "May 12" the 10 year return indicates the return I would have got had I invested 10 years ago in the Sensex, i.e. in May 2002, annualized.

Note carefully that none of the lines are close to their lows - that means returns are likely to go lower. But that needn't mean the index itself goes down from today's value; in 2013 Jan, the five-year-ago value will be over 20,000 for the Sensex, so even if we stay where we are, rolling returns will look negative.

Sure, you could say why not do a 5 year investment plan (SIP) instead, investing every month. What about those returns then?

Sadly, our returns have been lower than a fixed deposit, other than the 10 year SIP return. But that, I think, is because the Great Indian Stock Market Story Was Only For Five Years.

GaMa Entertainment Systems: Manufacturing and Developing Entertainment Hardware & Software

2012-05-25T03:15:28Z

Mentored and funded by SBVG (Sweat & Blood Venture Group) led by Vishal Gondal, CEO and Founder at Indiagames, GaMa Entertainment began its journey in 2008 in a small room in IIT Bombay.

GaMa Entertainment is a developer and manufacturer of entertainment hardware and software for the retail industry, specializing in innovative gaming machines.

“We had always been fans of the arcade games and were very disappointed with the fact that no new titles could reach India due to the lack of manufacturing support and the huge costs of international machines. Also, there was a lack of localized content. We decided to fix the problem and follow our passion of gaming. Hence, began the foray into entrepreneurship,” says Founder, Puneet Kumar.

Their journey began when they entered the Eureka business plan competition, one of the biggest B-Plan contests in Asia, having worked on prototypes to validate their ideas. “This is where Vaibhav (also Founder) and I met Vishal Gondal, CEO and founder of Indiagames. We were in constant touch with him as a mentor. On the final day of the contest he told us that he wanted to fund the company. Later that day, we also won the competition. More than the funds, we cherish the mentorship received from Vishal. All his experience in the gaming industry has helped us greatly,” says Puneet.

GaMa’s clients include the gaming zones one finds in most malls these days; Timezone (international chain of family entertainment centers with multiple gaming zones in India), Funcity (part of Landmark group) and Jammin (gaming zone from Ashok Piramal Group) to name a few. These gaming zones are usually called FECs (Family Entertainment Centers). A typical such center houses amusement activities like bowling, bumper cars, soft play area for kids, video games (racing, shooting etc.), redemption games (claw vending, ticket vending etc.) and sports games (basketball, air hockey etc.).

How it works

Various components of an arcade machine are: Cabinet, hardware components, electronics, wiring, lighting, decals and software.

Different parts of GaMa’s cabinets are manufactured by different vendors. These parts then arrive at their assembly unit for integration. Once the cabinet is completed, they fit the various hardware components like credit/token system, wheels, screws etc. After this, their technicians fit pre-tested circuits in the machine. These circuits are then connected via an intricate system of harnessing (wiring). The next step is to install lighting which makes the machine really attractive and stand-out from a distance. After these steps, the machine is covered with attractive artwork decals. The last step is to install the software and test the machine.

Once all the tests are passed, the machine is packed and shipped.

Interesting Products

The GaMa team is very excited about two of their most recent products. One of them, Terminator Salvation, is a first person shooting game to be launched next month. GaMa has partnered with RAW Thrills for launching this game in India.

The second product is a photo booth machine – Mymage. “It’s a first of its kind booth in India. It is an automated machine which houses a camera, lights, touch screen and a printer. We have successfully “Gamified” the photo studio experience with this product,” says Puneet, excited.

When customers enter the booth, they are prompted to choose from a list of templates. These templates allow them to convert their photos to pictures like a Wanted poster, a photo with their favourite cartoon character, a photo with their spouse or a nice family portrait. The customers then pose in front of the camera 4 times (they can see themselves on the screen) making silly faces, giving cool looks and showing some attitude. At the end of it, they can choose the one photo which looks the best and the machine prints the same in less than 30 seconds giving them a souvenir they will cherish for a long time. “Since, we use a very professional Dye-Sublimation photo printer, the prints are just breath-taking. We are very proud of this product as it has enabled us to extend the gaming experience outside of traditional games and allowed us to re-invent the joy of photos. These photos are also instantly uploaded to our servers from where you can download them, share them on Facebook and participate in social interaction on the web,” says Puneet.

The Team

Puneet Kumar and Vaibhav Goel started the company back in 2008. Puneet is a B. Tech. in Aerospace Engineering and Vaibhav an M. Tech in Mechanical. Recently, Shreyas, a friend of Puneet and Vaibhav who was with them at IIT Bombay while doing his B.Tech in Electrical engineering also joined the core team.

Revenue and Marketing

GaMa has two types of Revenue models. One is the traditional outright sales model wherein they sell their machines to their clients.

The second model is a revenue-sharing model wherein they install their machines at the client’s premises and share the revenues earned by the machine with the client. In this model, the client doesn’t have to block his capital in buying the machines and can invest the same in operations and marketing. Since GaMa also maintains the machines, there is no overhead due to service and repairs.

“We usually market ourselves via the industry specific print media (e.g. Thriller magazine). We are a member of the IAAPI (Indian Association of Amusement Parks & Industries). We are also a regular exhibitor at the annual national exhibition organized by them. It provides an excellent platform for all the people related to the industry to interact with each other. We also focus on brand presence on all our machines in form of decals and backlit signage,” says Puneet.

Challenges

Hardware start-ups usually face a very different set of challenges. Manufacturing is traditionally a very capital intensive activity. Moreover, in a start-up, resources are always scarce. “One of our biggest challenges was how to get international quality products designed with minimum capital invested. We overcame this challenge by re-thinking and contemporising traditional knowledge. Instead of investing a lot of money in an assembly line, we partnered with many top quality vendors who agreed to work for us on a contract basis at affordable rates. This allowed us to focus on the core R&D activities and improve the quality of our products,” says Puneet.

Maintaining and managing inventory was another big challenge. Idle inventory not only blocks capital, it also eats up storage space which results in increased costs. “We solved this problem by optimizing the work flow through all our vendors thereby ensuring a just in time production system. Also, instead of storing the entire machine, we maintained inventory of some of the parts which took longer times to manufacture and source. This allowed us to reduce the time from ‘order placed’ to ‘order shipped’,” says Puneet.

The road ahead

Based out of Mumbai, GaMa plans to ramp up to many more cities this year. They are partnering with international IP developers to bring their titles to the Indian market. “One of our first collaboration has been with RAW Thrills, one of the biggest manufacturers of arcade video games in the world. They have an impressive line of titles like Terminator (shooting), Fast & Furious Cars (car racing), Fast & Furious Super Bikes (bike racing) etc.,” says Puneet.

They are also expanding their horizons outside the gaming zones via their Photo Booths. “We are looking to expand to many high footfall locations like malls, tourist locations, retail spaces, railway stations etc.,” adds Puneet.

GaMa raised the second round of financing from Hope Island Pvt. Ltd led by Sanjay Parthasarhty and Granite Hill Venture Partners. “Sanjay is also a mentor to the company. He has a lot of experience in grooming start-ups and many of his business suggestions have proved invaluable for the company,” adds Puneet.

More about the company here.

What’s next for Google and Motorola?

2012-05-25T03:15:07Z

Google completed its acquisition of Motorola this week, and officially turned into a hardware maker. This $12.5 billion acquisition is Google’s biggest, and represents Google’s focus on trying to make mobile work.

Despite all the hype, there are significant challenges in the mobile world. There has been a lot of hype around phones, tablets and all things mobile in the last couple of years, but now that the dust is settling down a bit , it’s slightly easier to see through the fog of hype and look at the reality.

The Bottom Line

And the reality is that making money in the mobile space is very difficult. This has been known for a long time, but has been ignored to various degrees by everyone. In fact, many people are blaming the disappointing Facebook IPO on Facebook for not making it clear just how hard it is to monetize users on the mobile. Facebook is making $4.34 per user today. On the mobile, it makes close to $0.0. Google is much better positioned in the mobile world, making $2.5 Billion a year on mobile. But even that is a small number compared to its overall revenues. Growth is another challenge. There’s this constant buzz about the “next billion” coming on mobile, but let’s remember that that some 3 Billion people on the planet live on less than $2.5 a day. Just how exactly are Facebook et. al. going to monetize these people?

The only company making real money from mobile is Apple. And Google is enormously jealous of all that money, and I think that’s what the Motorola acquisition is really about. Google will tightly couple Motorola’s phones and tablets with Android, trying to create an experience that rival’s Apple’s seamless one.

Ecosystem Risk

Google, of course, denies all this, saying it will treat Motorola at arm’s length. It is essential that Google keeps saying this, since it has all these Android partners to worry about. Samsung, which is now the world’s largest maker of smartphones, risks getting upset at this move, and so Google is treading with caution here. It has a good thing going with Android overall, and doesn’t want to shoot itself in the foot. But the signs are all there, and everyone is anticipating a big shakeout in the Android world. It’s just a matter of time

Actions speak louder than Words

While Google’s PR is busy reassuring partners that its business as usual, there are moves behind the scene that indicate otherwise. Most interestingly, Google replaced Sanjay Jha, the head of Motorola with its own insider Dennis Woodside. That makes it easier for Google to integrate with Motorola in a very deep way. Google has also started the hype on the next set of Android devices – Leaks about the new Nexus phones and rumors that Google will sell a whole slate of Nexus phones and tablets directly this year, becoming an integrated player in the mobile world itself.

I think there’s a very interesting battle ahead that will break out by the year’s end. Google really really wants to wrest back control of Android, which many people have claimed is already out of Google’s hands. Google is also desperate to create an integrated hardware + software experience that can delight consumers and create a real alternative to the iDevices. Google also has other hobbies with hardware – Google TV, self-driving cars, the Google glasses.

I can bet that Motorola will play a significant role in these projects going forward as well. So here’s the prediction: Google starts selling phones and tablets directly this year. Motorola also makes a big push into GoogleTV and other consumer devices. And the simmering tension between Google and the other Android makers boils over, with several of them doing their OSes or forking android.

This is going to be fun!

Why Pakistan interferes in Afghanistan

2012-05-25T03:05:53Z

A strong, independent Afghanistan is perceived as an existential threat to Pakistan

Just why is Pakistan interested in installing a friendly regime in Afghanistan? If you read books and articles written over the last couple of decades, you will come across arguments such as the need for “strategic depth” to counter India, to prevent a pro-India regime in Kabul that will result in the Indian encircling of Pakistan and, even more grandly, to create an Islamic centre of power that stretches from the shores of the Arabian Sea to the Caucasus mountains. Going by the statements of members of the Pakistani establishment and some of its commentators, these are indeed the reasons why Pakistan wants to dominate Afghanistan.

Yet, to a large extent, the ambition and the paranoia that motivates these goals are in the realm of fantasy. Important people might believe in these fantasies, which means they must be taken seriously, because those important people do act on the basis of their delusions. However, there is also an argument to be made that these fantasies, paranoias and strategic sophistries are used to mask the real motive.

Pakistan’s real motive in seeking to dominate Afghanistan is the fear of its own dismemberment. Until the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, Islamabad’s main agenda was to prevent Kabul-supported Pashtun and Baloch nationalism from escalating into full-blown movements for independence. The strength of Pashtun nationalism and Kabul’s rejection of the Durand Line (which continues to this day) create deep insecurities in Islamabad, causing it both to bolster Islamism as an ideological counter, sponsor political instability in Afghanistan and attempt to install a friendly regime there.

It is a matter of historical fact that Pakistan—under President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto—began training Islamist militants in 1973, long before the Soviet invasion. Burhanuddin Rabbani, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Ahmed Shah Massoud received training in Pakistani camps so that Bhutto could counter Kabul ‘forward policy’ towards Pakistan. Kabul’s policies over the Durand Line had caused Pakistan to close its borders with Afghanistan in 1961. When the Baloch insurgency erupted in the early 1970s, Kabul (under the Daoud regime) supported it. Bhutto’s response was to nurture proxies in the form of Islamist militants—an old trick for the Pakistani establishment—under the leadership of the then Brigadier Naseerullah Babar, who as Inspector-General of the Frontier Corps, set up training camps in North and South Waziristan. More than 5000 militants were thus trained between 1973-1977. Again, it must be stressed, before the Soviets invaded. The narrative that most people accept—that Pakistan’s sponsorship of the mujahideen was a response to Soviet invasion of Afghanistan—is factually incorrect. [Rizwan Hussain's Pakistan and the Emergence of Islamic Militancy in Afghanistan has a good account of this]

The Pakistani establishment fears that a strong independent Afghanistan—like the one that existed up to the mid-1970s—will pursue an irredentist agenda, claiming the Pashtun areas of Pakistan. People in the tribal regions of Pakistan have only a tenuous association with the Pakistani state, and even for people in the so-called ‘settled areas’ of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, age-old Pashtun solidarity is often stronger than allegiance to a geopolitical entity called Pakistan. Afghanistan can well decide to support the insurgency in Balochistan to weaken Pakistan enough. Therefore, Pakistani strategists can see an existential threat in a strong, independent Afghanistan.

They can’t, however, state this as the official reason, because to do so would be admit the hollowness of the idea of Pakistan. That’s why fantastic notions of strategic depth, pre-empting strategic encirclement or building a Central Asian caliphate come in useful. “Strategic depth” is a plausible justification to convince patriotic Pakistanis of why their military is interfering in Afghanistan. Islamabad’s case appears a lot more ‘understandable’ to international opinion if it cites the fear of Indian encirclement rather than fear of Pashtun and Baloch self-determination as the reasons for its actions. Domestic and foreign Islamists will be enthused by the idea of flying the green flag of Islam all the way to the borders of Russia.

Theoretically, Pakistan’s military-jihadi complex might be persuaded to stop destabilising Afghanistan if it were convinced that Kabul will not lay claim to Pashtun lands east of the Durand Line. In practice that would be nearly impossible, not least because Afghan nationalism will not accept it. Even Mullah Omar’s Taliban regime didn’t.

Some matters will be decided by the force of arms. If at all.

Beauty At Bandstand

2012-05-25T00:09:55Z

In Bandstand, home to billionaires Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan as well as their Dalit service people, no-one is too rich or poor to be unaffected by the beauty of the ocean.

At the sea’s edge, beggar kids scream and laugh and play out their dramas: more cinematic, epic versions of their real lives. They walk a distance that would tire me out once twenty times in a day, and still find something within themselves to dance at the pumping music from other peoples’ cars.

Those with the luxury of time to spend on their health, like me, do. Pairs of men and women trot up and down, chatting together. Women in Punjabi suits or western sportswear, men in casual shorts and sports socks pulled up to their knees. Both in runners, walking.

Scrap collectors have bodies that are so used that they’re almost used up. They have nowhere really that they’re allowed or supposed to be, or not. Ragpicking men and women have no boss, and so in a way are richer than Shah Rukh Khan, at least making their own schedules and answering to no-one.

With no place though, they gather at the edges of things: streets, dhabas, parks. Like snails, making homes out of anything. Thin bodies sleeping thick sleep, on their stomachs, on cardboard sheets, on the side of the road.

Along the walkway’s railing, every ten feet or so, there is a couple sitting under an umbrella. The men lean in close, whispering this or that sweet thing, wooing girls with their words and adoration. They confidently lace their fingers through the girls’ delicate hands with painted fingernails, trying. The girls blush, but don’t reveal how starry and hopeful they feel in their stomachs. The Indian girl at the flirting age is an unpredictable creature, sometimes smiling, and in the same moment, raising a threatening hand. The guys don’t know what to do, and so continue their Devdas poetry, hoping for the best.

When it starts to rain, those older couples who are too settled and tired to bother with romance, leave. So do the young couples who aren’t as sure about one another yet. What they have is not yet worth getting wet for, and risking fever. Only those convinced they are for each other stay, heros and heroines in their own Hindi movies in their minds.

Dogs sleep on the sides of the boardwalk, dreaming unknown dreams and rolling back and forth in the dust, sometimes settling on their backs. Like beetles, dead, stunned in the sun. Chaiwalas walk up and down swinging their teapots. They call out the words ‘chai, coffee’ in voices that sound as though they’ve been run over and rubbed with gravel and broken glass. Ragged, but still cheerful.

Photo credit: akshayphoto.com

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Why oil prices will keep falling

2012-05-24T16:35:00Z

The trend derives as much from the fundamentals of supply and demand as it does from the psycho-speculative forces that generate risk premiums ranging from $20-30 extra per barrel

Policy paralysis of another kind

2012-05-24T16:37:00Z

The United Progressive Alliance is gripped by inaction but not of the kind described by votaries of the market

Opening ourselves to our fullest potential

2012-05-24T16:08:00Z

Stephen Levine in his book A Year to Live posed a simple question: If you had only a year to live what would you do differently

A realistic growth number for India

2012-05-24T16:08:00Z

Evidence shows that India can grow, at best, close to 7% annually without fuelling inflationary fires

Mirror Your Real Life Interactions in the Digital World with Hmmm App

2012-05-24T11:42:18Z

The personal life streaming app that lets your present yourself online, just like you do in real life launched at Tech Crunch Disrupt.

Hmmm introduces an intuitive approach to mirror our real life interactions in the digital world. In real life, we tailor our identity, our tone, our outlook based on who we are interacting with but this wasn’t possible in the digital world. Hmmm allows you to do this. With the unique feature of “Avatars”, Hmmm allows you to seamlessly calibrate your identity, your audience and your tone when you present yourself in the digital world.

In the digital world to be be sure we’re sharing it with the right people, we either end up sharing what we think would interest everyone or not share anything at all. This can be avoided today using groups/circles and tweaking through the maze of privacy settings. However, existing array of solutions are extremely cumbersome and non-intuitive. The Hmmm team has found an interesting solution to this, that they call Avatars.

When asked about the Avatars, Co-founder Archana Patchirajan says that, “Avatars are just the reflection of the multiple roles we play in real life. I’m Archana Patchirajan to the whole world but I’m not just Archana Patchirajan, I’m Archi to my parents, Archu to my Husband. And when I play these respective roles with the respective people, I’m at ease, I express without inhibitions. And that is what we are bringing to the online world now!”

The updates from the Avatars are only targeted to the set of people that the user has given access to. And since the update is always relevant to that Avatar, the audience is also in sync with the updates. A simple and effective way to filter signal from noise.

In addition to this, is the interesting feature of selective visibility. A user can comment on a public post by a friend, via an avatar visible only to that friend and voila! no one other than the user and that friend can see the comment. Hmmm empowers you with selective sharing at the most granular level. One can also add their existing facebook friends to Avatars and interact with them right from within the Hmmm app.

Hmmm, also has this inbuilt intelligence that works just for you and weaves a story using all the information shared. It automatically puts structure around the information and curates your activities, emotions, music and pictures. If one simply shares a song, Hmmm gives back the rich story of all the associations with the song. Who all listened to the song, friends who shared the song, top activities performed while listening to the song etc. Quoting the people at Hmmm, “It auto-magically builds the story of your life!”

The app can be downloaded from the App store here. Aurality is another interesting app with Indian founders who presented at Disrupt. Read their story here.

Head to The Better India for Positive news and Happy Stories

2012-05-24T11:06:29Z

The rupee ends at 56.00 for the day, slipping down by 1.1%. Fuel prices have soared through the roof, crossing the 80INR mark. The IPL has been hit by allegations of spot fixing. There’s then the daily dose of news about corruption, poverty and crime. Plus today news channels, in a battle to sensationalize everything, put in the extra dramatic effect, and we’re condemned to believe that doomsday is just around the corner.

Enter ‘The Better India’, a website covering positive news (and positive news only) across the country, showcasing unsung heroes and spreading community- changing initiatives.The website was started off by two Bangalore based techies turned ISB grads, Anuradha Parekh & Dhimant Parekh. “It is a lean organization which works on contribution from freelance writers who share our vision and are passionate about spreading the positive journalism movement along with us,” says Dhimant.

As one would expect, the idea cropped up upon reading mainstream newspapers and magazines, where it struck them that there wasn’t enough positive news coverage. “While it is very important to point out what’s wrong with the country, we felt that it is equally important to point out what’s right. The idea that we believe in is that “news” can do something more other than just shock you. It can inspire you to bring an impact, it can move you to change things for the better,” Dhimant passionately adds.

Initially though, the major stumbling block was the ability to find positive news.”We were then fortunate to have a couple of people join us – two people in Delhi and one in Bangalore – who formed our initial team. This gave us some boost and traction. Then onwards, we’ve had many more people join us and help us in various departments including content, marketing, advertising, forging partnerships and so on.”

The team now at ‘The Better India’ is a growing one, comprising of writers who believe in the cause. These writers come from all walks of life including social journalism, ex-mainstream journalism, travel and business consulting, and they all write for the love of writing and reporting inspiring stories.

Anuradha & Dhimant Parekh - The founders

To also help source positive news, they have partnered various organizations that work with them and identify positive stories across India. “For instance, we partnered with Radio Netherlands Worldwide South Asia Wired division to help carry their stories. We are currently also in partnership with India Water Portal, Women’s Feature Service and many more such organizations,” informs Dhimant.

Since taking off only about four years ago, July 2008 to be precise, the traction that the site’s been getting is nothing short of promising, especially considering that the marketing so far has been fuelled majorly via word of mouth! Having an equally active Facebook page and a Twitter handle, both of which have close to 7000 fans and followers, they have received their fair share of accolades as well. “We won at the Manthan Awards for 2011 where we were selected amongst hundreds of organizations across Asia. We have been invited to speak to a class of students from the University of Washington Seattle who visited India to learn about social justice and activism,” says Dhimant.

‘The Better India’ has also served as an online media partner with several organizations and events, helping them reach out to a much larger and more relevant audience.

Their revenue model is currently based on earnings mainly through advertising on the website.

The plan for the future is for ‘The Better India’ to become as popular as any mainstream news publication. Dhimant enthusiastically says, “We believe only then can we really enable cross-pollination of ideas, sharing of successful initiatives, motivating people to bring about a change around them. Things that will enable to do so include going offline into the print medium and publishing in vernacular languages since a major chunk of India does not read in English. We definitely plan to do these two things in the next five years.”

“We are humbled by the fact that there are so many people out there who like our work and believe in the cause of positive journalism as much as we do,” adds Dhimant, signing off.

Check out a few inspiring stories from their site here.

Chalkpad: Cloud Based Campus Management System

2012-05-24T09:21:11Z

An edutech company, Chalkpad makes campus management systems (also sometimes called Education ERP systems) on the cloud. This software aims to make the management of schools, colleges and universities easier and efficient. “Our software is web based and connects the different stakeholders, ie management, parents, students and faculty by bringing them on a common information platform.” says founder Kabir Khanna.

Chalkpad has an ensemble of products under the PAD title- CollegePAD, SchoolPAD and UnivPAD- all of which strive to make education management easier. Kabir Khanna, the founder, is a Computer Science graduate with more than 16 years of experience in IT industry working with companies of national and international repute. Having launched Chalkpad back in August 2008 with the aim of helping the Education sector leverage technology to improve efficiencies and extend possibilities, the initial products take a huge step in this direction.

Talking about their journey, Kabir says, “The first year and a half was mostly product development phase (products are completely built in house from ground up). The next one year was a little tough marketing the solution as we are educating the customer on the benefits of a ‘Campus Management System’ as well as the SaaS model of selling. I am happy and also relieved to say that since the last one year, the awareness of such software as ours has increased exponentially and now we regularly get enquiries from many new customers wanting to consider and evaluate our software. We are also talking to some very large organizations who can become channel partners of a solution like ours in their own geographies.”

Founder, Kabir Khanna

Chalkpad has a motivated team of 40 people right now with people from high-profile companies who’ve joined the fold along the way. “The team at Chalkpad is very passionate about our mission to help leverage technology in the education sector and that clearly reflects in the success of our products.” says Kabir proudly. Education as a sector has still not been fully able to leverage technology to it complete advantage and this is what Chalkpad aims to change. “In the last 5 years, India has indeed seen a lot of awareness and growth in this area but still a lot is left to be desired. In the broadest sense, I think the three key areas in which Technology can make a huge impact in the Education space are “Information Access” (Internet, wikipedia,open courseware, iTunesU, etc.) , “Collaboration and networking” (facilitators: skype, niche social networking , Piazza ), “Education management”(Lecture capture systems, Campus management systems ). Immense opportunity exists in each of these areas and we should be seeing much more and healthy competition here for the next 4-5 years.” says Kabir.

The revenue generation for Chalkpad is straightforward- It charges a per student/per month fees from the institution. The amount varies depending on the strength of the institution as well as the number of functional modules they wish to take. “Our module cover the complete breadth of functions like fees, hostel and fleet management, time tabling, grading, attendance, appraisals, communication, SMS integration, academic analytics, reporting, etc. Some of these are core modules and some optional.” adds Kabir.

As lead generation through online marketing is a part and parcel or the marketing strategy, apart from direct marketing, word of mouth publicity matters a lot in such cases. “Since a solution like ours touches not just a few in any institution but rather the complete breadth of users (right from your fees admission office clerk, to a senior faculty member, to the parents) and there is often staff movement among institutions in a region, a lot of our leads come from word of mouth references as well.” he explains.

Having made good inroads in the states of Punjab, Haryana and Himachal with higher education, the road ahead looks bright. Sometimes customization to a minute detail is required and scaling up in this sense is a problem but with a very high focus on academic analytics which lets you track each and every students’ performance and other powerful features like Parent engagement, tilts the balance on the positive side. Chalkpad has recently launched SchoolPAD 2.0 and are bullish on this front.

For more information , visit Chalkpad. For other education starups doing exciting things, you might want to check out Eduora and MySuperBrain.

Chart: Petrol Prices Up by Rs. 7.5

2012-05-24T10:00:11Z

Petrol prices went up by Rs. 7.5 per liter yesterday, making life miserable for nearly all Indians. Turns out Goa is the cheapest petrol in the country, charging no state taxes on the black fuel.

Bangalore is the most expensive of the lot.

Petrol in India has seen what I call the hockey stick curve.

Now I hope they raise diesel prices too.

Winners Of TechHub – A&N Media Battle Of The Startups ContestIn London Win 1M/1M Scholarships

2012-05-24T06:30:29Z

Last night, at a packed event inLondon’s TechHub, A&N Media awarded five yearlong 1M/1M scholarships. The judges for the contest were Kevin Beatty, CEO of A&N Media, Dominique Trempont, Board Member of DMGT (parent company of A&N Media), Bill Raduchel, Strategic Advisor to DMGT, Alberto Torres, former EVP and GM of Nokia’s MeeGo division, and me.

Let’s review the businesses we saw.

goCarShare
Drummond Gilbert, pitched goCarShare to connect drivers with paying passengers who wish to travel the same way, allowing them to share the journey costs. It uses Facebook to connect users with friends of friends and a rating system to help create a trusted community. goCarShare will take a commission of 15 % of the paid transaction between the passenger and driver.

Platter
Will Hodson pitched Platter, a cross between Instagram and Pinterest for food, along with other features such as micro blogging, vertical search, and so forth. Will proposes to use affiliate marketing as a way of monetization similar to what Pinterest is attempting.

Fitness Freak
Shara Tochia pitched Fitness Freak, a bookable Web platform that allows users to search for and book fitness classes and activities. It also integrates with booking partners to offer an easy-to-use service and a review platform for journalists and users.

Insane Logic
Next, Zoe Peden pitched Insane Logic and an educational iPad app called MyChoicePad. It uses symbols and sign language with speech to enable choice and communication for children and adults with learning or communication difficulties.

PopUpShopUp
Then Steven Lucero pitched PopUpShopUp, a social media for popup shops, restaurants, cinema, entertainment, charities or any and all temporary retail events, utilizing a curated member-based website, www.popupshopup.com, weekly email newsletter, mobile application and check-in technology. PopUpShopUp aims to become the marketplace for consumers to visit to learn about all popup events first inLondon, then throughout theUK and finally, in the top 100 urban areas of the world.

Hire Space
The next business pitched was Hire Space, a website that allows you to find, book and pay for publicly available space online. Hire Space works with a diverse range of venues, from schools to private function venues and provides a platform for the sale of associated services such as catering and entertainment.

TimeMaps
Jonny Britton pitched TimeMaps, a company that makes digital history maps to illustrate events over time. The company sells to schools, homeschoolers, parents and other educators all over the world.

Simplytics
Jason Cooper pitched Simplytics, a mobile advertising engagement analytics model to help better measure user engagement with ads.

Enjoy! Karaoke
Neill Watson pitched Enjoy! Karoke, a Facebook game that taps into the vast pool of singing fun that dominates prime time TV.

Thestudentjob
Jack Tang pitched Thestudentjob.com, a social-network-based job portal connecting students with local employers looking for casual staff on a one-off or part-time basis.

The winners of the contest were: Enjoy! Karaoke, Thestudentjob, InsaneLogic, Platter, and goCarShare.

As always, I would very much like to hear about your business, so let me invite you to come and pitch at one of our free 1M/1M public roundtables. We will be holding future roundtables at 8:00 a.m. PDT on:

I also invite you to join the 1M/1M mailing list for the ease and convenience of getting updates. This way we can stay in touch, and it will help you to decide if 1M/1M is a program for you.