The Cloud

Moving to Frankfurt

2015-09-27T17:05:00.002+05:30

I will be relocating to Frankfurt, Germany very shortly. I have started a new blog, NextStopFrankfurt, to pen down my thoughts and experiences. You can read my posts here.

Wonderla IPO subscribed 38 times

2014-04-24T09:10:00.000+05:30

Wonderla came out with an IPO and the offer has been subscribed 38 times, with retail investors clocking 7.30 times.

This is another example that if a public offer is priced right, management good and the business sound, then there will still be takers in the primary market. We also witnessed that same in PowerGrid's FPO as well. Hope this will bring some more sanity to the promoters and investment bankers in the IPOs/FPOs to follow.

Facebook's acquisition of WhatsApp..

2014-02-25T22:32:00.001+05:30

There has been some very heated conversations in off on whether Facebook is right to acquire WhatsApp, more so, of the valuation of $19B justified.

I have myself read so many posts and no one has done a more comprehensive analysis than Aswath Damodaran, professor of Finance at NYU Stern, and a Valuation expert.

Read it here.

Apparently, Google had tried to scuttle the deal and had reached out to WhatsApp founder, Jan Koum, with a $10B offer but the later had refused. When Eric Schmidt, Google's chairman, was asked on this deal, he gave what I think a very "evasive and defeatist response".

"People have been talking about a bubble in technology for years," Schmidt said. "The price was low if they make gazillions of dollars off of the customers they're getting...The price is too high if they can't monetize"

Why Anna-Mamata alliance is doomed to fail?

2014-02-25T22:28:00.000+05:30

A fortnight back or so, I was horrifed to read the news that Anna Hazare has decided to campaign for Mamata Banerjee, the mercurial leader of TMC and the chief minister of West Bengal. I had always considered Anna to be apolitical and that he is always against what is wrong with Indian polity and politicians. So, when Arvind Kejriwal separated from his movement and floated his own political party, I was not surprised. In fact, I supported Kejriwal for laws and good laws cannot be made on the streets or Jantar Mantar for that matter. I was also not surprised when Anna refused to publicly support Kejriwal and his Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the Delhi polls since I thought Anna is strongest when he is apolotical.

However, all these theories came to a naught when I learnt from the news channels that Anna has decided to publically support Mamata Bannerjee's party, the TMC, in the forthcoming Lok Shaba elections. While Anna, like any other Indian, can support any political party or leader he wants to, he should have never put on an apolotical mask in the first place. Here is why I think this alliance is doomed to fail sooner than later.

Firstly, Anna has greatly misunderstood Mamata. While it is true that she has been able to take over the reins of Bengal from the clutches of the Left, however, I don't think she has done any great job as a Chief Minister of the state. West Bengal is still shunned by the industries, there are cases of rapes and more rapes for which her only response is that those are framed conspiracy of the Left, there are still infants dying in the government hospitals all over the states, she is yet to solve the Darjeeling problem, nor the Sharada Chit Fund scam on which she has done precious nothing. The list will go on.

Secondly, Anna's stance has confused and baffled me. Similar to what Saral's writes in his article, I think Anna has betrayed us, all those who supported his apolitical struggle to have a corruption free India. What looks like is that Anna has a 17 point agenda (or vision some may say) of India and that he would support any political party who would agree to them. It seems that Didi is is the first person to take the bait. Though I have not seen Anna's 17 point agenda, it apparently seems that Anna is playing to be a king-maker (or queen-maker if you like). This seems to be a quid pro quo and I am sure Didi will revolt very soon.

Let's wait and watch !!

Why Google will be Facebook of the future?

2013-09-17T09:02:00.003+05:30

Just came across this article on Google...on "Why Google will be the Facebook of the future"? Written by Vivek Wardha, VP of Innovation and Research at Singularity University and Fellow at Stanford Law School, this article talks about the how Google's innovation, invention and products will change our lives in the further (no that they haven't done anything yet).

The title of the article seems to be a "blasphemy" :-) to ardent Google fans. However, the author is quick to denounce Facebook on many a count.

What do you think ?

A tale of two CEOs

2013-09-03T18:09:00.000+05:30

Came across two contrasting news on CEO's pay today. On one hand, Kingfisher's CEO received a salary of 4 crore when the company itself has gone kaput, unable to pay legitimate salaries to its employees. On another hand, Lenovo's CEO has shared his bonus with his company's workers, second time in a row.

India lose to South Korea in Asia Cup Hockey

2013-09-01T21:10:00.000+05:30

Just witnessed a terrible performance from India in the Asia Cup Hockey final against South Korea. India lost the match 3-4. In the first half itself, Korea took a 2-0 lead with was leveled by India in the 2nd. Soon enough, Korea scored one more and was leveled again by India. The score board read 3-3 until the dying minutes in the second half when the Korean stuck the final nail in the coffin.

Though India rallied back from behind twice, it was a poor match for India. Neither could India control the pace of the game nor could they defend well against a skilled Korea. In the most important match of the tournament, the Indian couldn't play the fluent hockey they has been playing all along in the tournament.

Your social networking skills will determine your deal with the bank

2012-03-05T20:41:00.002+05:30

Banks are gearing up to use customer's social networking skills such as number of friends in Facebook to determine preferential interest rates to be given to a customer.
So, go make new friends in Facebook..

Read on

MBA Salary Survey 2011 (India)

2011-11-21T19:57:00.001+05:30

Here is a MBA salary survey for 2011, done by a MBA job site called iimjobs.

MBA salary survey 2011

View more presentations from iimjobs

"Apple" gone sour

2011-11-21T11:07:00.000+05:30

Unlike all other consumer goods company, where the company wants to associate itself with the customer, the case for Apple is just the opposite. Apple has created for itself such as niche that customers buys Apple's product to create a differentiation from the masses. Mac, iPod, iPad, iPhone have been a testimony of the same. Indians have not been indifferent to Apple. People in India are also as excited on a launch of an Apple product as people are in US or Europe. However, Apple has been i(n)different to Indian consumers. The company has always delayed the launch of its products in India, so much so that when iPad 1 was made available in india, US consumers almost had iPad 2 in their hands.

Things have become worse with the launch of iPhone 4. In India, Apple has launched iPhone 4S at much higher price than its US retail cost, almost at a 33% premium. The following post from Economic Times sums it up. Needless to add, Indian Apple fans are complaining. Will Apple pay heed?

Getting into XLRI GMP (in any B-school for that matter)

2011-11-16T00:23:00.001+05:30

Come Nov, Dec and MBA aspirants rush to evaluate their chances in getting into the B-school of their choice. They have a billion questions on their minds on the compisition of the batches, suitability of their profile for a particular course, cut offs and so on..
Some time back, I had written a detailed post in a popular MBA forum, Pagalguy on this very topic. Putting the same over here. Hope it helps to bring in some clarity
Even though I have never been on the other side of the table, I surmise that there are seven points that are considered in the admission process, viz
- Acads

- Extra Curriculars
- Test Score
- Work Experience
- Essays
- Interview (once you are shortlisted)
- Overall profile
Now let us understand these points once by one. Acads: This is a sunk cost you cannot change. So don't sweat about this at all. But prepare a question a two on your (poor) acads in case this topic is discussed in the interview. You all are not in that position as of today, so just chuck this. If you have good acads, pray to the Almighty that a question or two is also asked to you which you can blush and answer.
Extra Curriculars: Very much like the acads, you cannot do much about this at this time as the admission process is less than 4 months to go. People who are planning to apply later can still pick up a vocation of choice and fare slightly better. For the time being I will consider this as a sunk cost as well. But pls dont try to become a philatelist or a sportsperson over night. That will do more wrong than right.
Test Score: This is one of the most important criteria at this point of time. Try to get it as higher as possible. This can be a make or break as there is, most often that not, something called "cut-off" on this unlike the previous two points.
Work Experience: This may be important. I am using the word "may" because most of the aspirants have very similar profile. This is all the more true for engineer + IT professionals. This is the most dangerous combo because of its ubiquity. At least for this genre of aspirants, this is also a sunk cost unless one has done something really spectacular such as hold a patent, or is a Microsoft/Intel Research scholar etc. Do you think a IT professional with 5 years of work exp can compete with a doctor with 5 years experience when it comes to comparison? I think the answer is "no". If you know that you won't be able to compete, then why compete? (Disclaimer: I also belong to this herd).
Essays: In some B-Schools, the aspirants are supposed to write essays while applying. In XLRI, if I am not mistaken, one is expected to write and submit essays only before the interviews. Again, don't worry about this at this point of time.
Interview: Cross that bridge when you come to it.
Overall profile: This is of utmost important apart from the score (GMAT or XAT). Try your level best to improve your profile. You can develop your expertise on some topic or domain. There will always be something you are really good at. For example, an IT professional who can do Technical analysis, or one who writes in popular websites/ blogs, or some one who likes to spend casual weekends in social service, etc There is always something. A brief self-introspection will do a world of good.

I hope this long post of mine helps at least some of you. All the very best in the pursuit.

Oracle of Omaha buys into the Big Blue

2011-11-15T23:55:00.001+05:30

Well, well, well, after shading decades of apathy towards the technology companies, the legendary investor, Warren Buffet invested close to $11B to buy some 5.5% stake in IBM.
If this is interesting, then hold on, there is more to it. Buffet has been buying IBM for sometime and also had got exemption from SEC to avoid disclosure in its filings. Even IBM was not aware the Buffet has been increasing his stake in his company.
The point to ponder is whether it is okay for the SEC to grant exemption to the big investors such as Buffet, Carl Icahn etc when they start buying in publicly held companies...

My way

2011-11-15T23:13:00.000+05:30

I was just watching a popular stand up comedy on TV, when the reference of this very famous and thought provoking song by Frank Sinatra came up and I just couldn't stop myself listen to it and share it with all of you. This is just as beautiful as it gets out there. I am sure it will capture your imagination too...

XLRI-GMP on HT

2011-08-31T19:52:00.000+05:30

In Open the Excel Sheet, Hindustan Times has published a short article on XLRI's General Management Program.

Also, Anna Hazare's Anti Corruption Movement is all set to become a case study at XLRI.

Back..finally

2011-08-15T21:11:00.000+05:30

After dilly dallying for a long time, I am back to posting my thoughts on to my blog. I will looking forward to the long weekend but it didn't live up to the expectation. Firstly, the Independence Day celebration was muted, may be because of the morning rains at Delhi or may be because of the war of words that is going on among Congress-Anna Hazare-BJP. It is not good over there.
Secondly, I had a lot of work and so had to spent a good part of the Monday morning on the office chores. Who likes it?
Thirdly, India's debacle at the hands of the English, did spoil the mood for the last three weeks or so.

My last post

2010-02-22T11:29:00.000+05:30

From today, I will write my posts on my website www.prijitdebnath.com. You can read them in the Random Musings section of my website.

Thank you so much for reading !!

Toyota fiasco, Japanese image takes a beating....

2010-02-06T04:44:00.000+05:30

Quality is perhaps one thing that cannot be taken for granted. And this is one point that comes up from the Toyota fiasco. I am not sure what would have been the case if any car manufacturer would have found defects in cars sold in India. But selling in the USA is a whole different paradigm. US customer give value for money and given the competition the producers are bound to follow suit. In B-Schools, there are so many case-studies on Japanese car manufactureres especially Toyota and how they always give top preference to quality. Something manufactured in Japan always underlined the fact that the product would be fault free. Not any more !!

With the President of Toyota going around apologizing to the consumers about the faulty break pedals in Toyota cars, I am certain that more than Toyota, Japanase brand image has taken a severe beating and it would take a long long time to fix this image issue.

My love for backpacks...

2010-02-01T10:59:00.000+05:30

I have been using backpacks ever since I was admitted to a school. That makes the association over a quater of a century old. I am so fond of backpacks that even after my academic life got over, I remained faithful to it. There was a threat when I got my first laptop which came with a different type of a shoulder bag. However, I continued to carry my laptop in my laptop INcompatible backback. However, it is not that I am faithful to a particular backpack. Once a backpack gets old, I replace it with a new one but at any point of time I associate myself with only one backpack. Such has been our bonding for a long stretch of time.

I have been using my current Eddie Bauer backpack for over three years now. I had bought it from a Target store from Cockeysville, Maryland. It had been with me almost every single day ever since. This time around while I was coming to US, I decided to retire my old mate. Yesterday, I went to Sports Unlimited and bought a new "Adidas" backpack. This bag has more protection for a laptop. The best thing of this bag is that it is not as bulky as a laptop bag is and hence can be used while I am without my laptop as well. I hope our association continues for a long time.

Back to San Jose....again

2010-01-24T03:55:00.000+05:30

Ok, I am in San Jose, California again. I was here for close to two weeks in August last year and now I am here..again...sounds a kind of boring..one of our big development center is here is at San Jose, next to the sprawling Cisco campus and so I have no other place to go. More so because most of the folks I work with are here. We also have an development center in Tel Aviv, Israel, but I don't see any opportunity to be there anytime soon.

The journey this time was kind of difficult. Since the total time to come to the west coast from India, be it from Mumbai or Delhi, is close to 19 hours, with a stop in between, it is preferable to have a stop somewhere in the middle i.e. have a 9 hours' journey followed by one for 10 hours. Air India, Lufthansa and other such airlines stop for some time at Frankfurt, Germany. This almost equally divides the journey into two halves. However, this time it was different and difficult. We took Emirates which meant that we had a stop over at Dubai, barely three hours from Delhi. This was followed with a long 16 hours non stop flight to San Francisco from Dubai. I felt kind of sick in the flight. To add to the trouble, the weather in the Bay Area was far from accommodating. It was windy, cold and rainy. Due to this inclement weather, we have no other option but to stay indoors. I have come over here so many times that am not complaining...

Training on (not indulging in) Insider Trading

2010-01-13T14:40:00.000+05:30

I had to attend a 30 minutes online training on Insider Trading today (on why we shouldn't be a part of it? to be precise). I am sure we all know that Insider Trading could be a pretty expensive affair, more so, if one gets caught. It has already reduced Rajaratnam bank balance by some $100M. Some of the high profile executives from IBM,Intel and Mckinsey have been indicted in this case. That made me wonder, if one can pay a bail amount of $100M, how much money he must have in his bank accounts.

Even though I don't own a single stock in my company and neither do I have any intention to trade on NASDAQ, where my company is listed, I was serious with the training atleast for the shake of learning.

Go on..be a Tiger..

2009-12-29T18:09:00.000+05:30

My friend Rishi wrote a post on Tiger Woods on how he is a miserable human being given the mess he is in at this moment. I think there is one another angle to the story which we have failed to consider before passing our comments.

Tiger Woods is Tiger Woods for what he does, i.e. for playing golf and that too playing the game remarkably well. His exploits in the game will confirm this. Again, he has been a brand ambassador of companies such as Gillete, Accenture and Nike because of his exploits i.e. again playing golf superbly well. When Accenture says "High Performance, Delivered", it tries to cash in on the on the superlative performance of the great player i.e. Accenture can delivered high performance as Woods does. In all these, the character, at least the one with a personal hue, of Tiger Woods never comes to the picture. Had Tiger Woods been a supremely moral man and awesome in playing golf (or for that matter some other popular sports), I am sure that these biggies would not have even considered him as their brand ambassador. Woods was chosen because he was one of the best, if not the best, professional golfer,a game popular with the corporate honchos who take decisions. That was perhaps Accenture's reason of selecting him. Nike,perhaps required a great and a popular sportsman to represent them and hence selected him and Gillete, perhaps for a reason somewhere in between.

The bottom line is that Tiger Woods was chosen for his capabilities, exploits and popularity and not because of his fidelity and chastity. It is only the media and Woods' celebrity status that has brought his case in the limelight and made it a world-event out of nothing. This doesn't mean that I want him to be infidel, but my point is simply that, infidelity or otherwise, Woods is still a top golfer and most often than not, it is "High Performance, Delivered".
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04-Jan-2010: A very interesting post by Prof. Damodaran of NY-Stern on the impact of Tiger Woods' related incidents on the market value of the companies he endorsed.
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Disclaimer: "High Performance, Delivered" is a punchline of Accenture.

My Christmas gift ...to myself

2009-12-28T10:43:00.000+05:30

Christmas is one more occasion when we give gifts to our near and dear ones. The other being Durga Puja, bengali as I am. So, after much ado and a lot of encouragement from my friend, I decided to buy myself a domain and host a website.

Since I didn't get an opportunity to create custom web pages as yet, I relied upon google, as always. I had created a few useful web pages a few days back on http://site.google.com. For the time being, I am redirecting my site to my google pages.

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Visit me at www.prijitdebnath.com
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Another one from experience....

2009-12-15T18:17:00.000+05:30

The more one runs after ones goal, the easily it deludes him. To realize something, just work for it and leave it alone.

SaaS / No-SaaS (What all apps moves to the cloud?)

2009-11-10T12:25:00.001+05:30

We had a talk delivered by Dr. Anand Deshpande, the MD of Persistent, a software company based in Pune. Mr. Deshpande, a acclaimed figure in the industry, spoke at length on the future of the IT industry, on Clouds (private and public) and so on. He also came up with a 2X2 matrix on what all apps would move to the cloud? With due respect to him, I came up with my own 2X2 matrix on SaaS/No SaaS. The example I have taken is for a banking industry.

I shared this with Dr. Deshpande for his comments but perhaps he is too busy to reply. Understandably :)

Random thoughts

2009-11-05T14:29:00.000+05:30

While the Sensex fell close to 500 points the day before yesterday, I thought -
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Since the market (say stock market) is inefficient and imperfect, it corrects itself to reflect the true value of the stocks, can't we human beings, imperfect as we all are, also correct ourselves from the misconceptions we hold.
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One more thought crossed my mind while I was watching the CBS serial, Numb3rs:
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Since the Universe is expanding at such as breakneck speed of 1.8 times the speed of light, we all eventually move away from one another one day. Knowing this reality, should we not try our best to get as close to one another as possible.
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