Gaurav's Blog

2014-06-18T22:38:00.000+05:30

Tata’s new airline: finding the sweet spot of convergence

Cheating Geography

Singapore is a nation that was dealt a poor hand by nature but one, which has through vision and sheer determination cheated its geography repeatedly.

Take the land reclamation project as an example, which has increased Singapore’s land area nearly 10% since 1960 & will eventually by 2030, grow it a whopping 26%, more than 1/4^th its original size. Singapore’s Changi Airport is almost entirely built on reclaimed land or land that was previously swampy. Or take fresh water supply- from being almost totally dependent on Malaysia for its fresh water supply in the 1960’s, Singapore is now not just self-sufficient, it has become a global water research and technology hub with active support from the government.

Not to be ignored is the example of Singapore’s Changi Airport- a predominant hub in South East Asia that handled a little over 53 million passengers in 2013. It was & is disadvantaged in no smaller measure than being a 2 hour flight diversion to the South if one were to fly from Australia to Europe. Not being directly en-route the popularly named route “kangaroo-Hop” was a major disadvantage to Singapore and a big plus for Bangkok, which, aside from being in a favorable location geographically, was also popular with the revelers of the 70’s. Thailand had all the beaches and sun that Europeans asked for.

Not to be discouraged, Singapore overcame its geographical disadvantage by building its remarkable success on its industry leading Airline and one of the most awarded Airports in the world. Passengers asked to be booked via Singapore and on Singapore Airlines; such were the standards it set.

Yet human intervention has its limits. Cities & hubs have risen and fallen throughout the history of humankind as circumstances changed. Even recent aviation history shows examples that define these changes- Bahrain, once a pre-eminent transfer point for Europeans traveling to Asia wilted as other hubs in the Middle East rose. Calcutta, an important mid-point for the British forces declined & remains the most poorly connected major city by air in India today.

As aircraft range/payload improved and continues to improve further, the rise of Middle East poses a threat to the Singapore hub and this is well documented & thought about. For the Airlines in Middle East are, quite literally, in the middle of the world now- New aircraft have brought Sydney well within the reach of Dubai even as Emirates introduces newer services to the western coast of United States. It flies to Buenos Aires (albeit with a stop today) and by and large delivers on its mission of connecting any urban conglomerate with another within 8000 nautical miles of Dubai, with enroute stop at its Dubai hub. With the 9600 NM range offered by 777-8x, scheduled for delivery in 2021, this mission statement would be more than fulfilled.

Singapore, on the other hand, hemmed in by geography, finds limits to its ambitions- it cannot profitably access the US market without a stop either in Europe or somewhere in Asia, whether its Japan, Korea or Taiwan. It is this limitation that makes Singapore Airline extremely possessive about its bread & butter Kangaroo route. It has forced SQ to refuse to allow any other carrier to effectively use its network, despite being a member of Star Alliance.

And indeed it was this limitation that was behind the thought of investing money into other carriers such as Virgin Atlantic, helped of course by zero debt and available cash. As the Kangaroo hop starts to lose its spring, Singapore had to act.

Tata’s Airline is re-born

No one can remain young forever. And so it is with the Singapore Girl. Singaporeans may squirm at the thought of their legendary icon being thus described but as unsexy as this may appear, she is about to become a mother to an Indian offspring fathered by the Tata’s.

Notwithstanding the genetic advantage this offspring may enjoy at birth, it may still be a worthwhile question to ask: What shape & size and looks would (should) the new-born take? Not all royals have succeeded and being born in royalty indeed is sometimes a disadvantage.

Take a peep into the airline world and one can, broadly, catalogue airlines into 3 types or business models:

1. Network driven characterized by complex network systems built over years. So most legacy US & European carriers will fall into this category, & Emirates would too, as it still is a network carrier, just newer. Today’s large airline systems would be tomorrow’s legacy carriers.

2. Product driven in a classical differentiation strategy, some carriers sought to build their offerings around a superior product so the likes of Singapore Airlines and Virgin Atlantic would fall in this category. They have introduced many new aircraft to the market, kept onboard product standards ahead of others and spent extra-ordinarily higher on building a brand through an advertising strategy.

3. Low cost carriers that focus on one single segment of the market with simplified operational footprint enabling them to offer a lower price.

One can add a few more business models like the regionals or the boutique all business class carriers but all of them are essentially either variations of the above or extensions of the same basic models.

Models above illustrated in the figure below

Gradually, carriers at any of the 3 ends of the triangle have continued to adapt & adopt best practices from each other such that their basic business model isn’t materially compromised with the desire to enhance their offerings to a larger segment. With the result that more and more carriers have started to closely resemble each other and their models appear to be indistinguishable. So low cost carriers are increasingly interlining and codesharing with legacy carriers and product based carriers want to get into alliances to enhance their networks and so on and so forth.

It won’t be incorrect to say that typically the evolution of airlines has followed a set trajectory- First came the legacy carriers, which were then followed by some product based carriers and when the market was deregulated, it gave rise to a lot of low cost carriers. In general that trend has upheld. In India, however, no true network carrier has ever been attempted, perhaps restricted by over-burdening regulation or even by lack of physical infrastructure.

Finding the sweet spot of convergence

Time offers the luxury of critically evaluating the business models of those who have already played their hand, also referred to as the late mover’s advantage. So Emirates, which has largely played its hand & placed it bet (& what a bet it has played) for the next 30 years is, in that sense, exposed. Its business model is frozen in time now, it can only continue to enhance and refine its offering using some of the newer technology. It cannot modify its genetic make-up or, do so, only at a great risk to its business- something that Ryanair is attempting.

Tata has this late movers’ advantage. It has the luxury to see exactly what in each model is working or did not work. And it has the opportunity to chisel out a perfectly fitting model for its primary market that is India.

What is that perfectly suited model? Is it the ultra-luxury onboard that some in the Middle East are offering or something that CAPA suggests- a Hybrid model? – CAPA doesn’t quite define its characteristics- A hybrid could look like a Jetblue but then Jetblue does not fly long haul. Would it then mean 2 different models for International & domestic? Besides, Indigo, is likely to look more and more like a hybrid carrier that closely resembles Jetblue, as it upgrades its offering and continues to have a spectacular operational record. So a Hybrid carrier, as it is generally understood today, is already a groove that is filled.

Should Tata instead look like its parent Singapore Airline? If indeed there was a sustainable market for first class in India, why did Jet Airways private cabins in its 777-300ER’s not succeed? There is evidence to suggest that while there may be a small International market for the first class, it is not profitable for an India based carrier to offer one as seen in the cases of both Air India and Jet Airways.

In my opinion, Singapore Airlines’ product offering in its front cabins is a notch higher than what the Indian market would buy in enough numbers. And those who do want to buy such a product could always infact look at the Middle East carriers present in India or indeed Singapore Airlines depending on whether they are flying West or East.

Something that is not so high up on luxury as to have priced itself out of the Indian market, nor as low down as to have erased any desired differentiation with a carrier like Indigo, What model offers that sweet spot of convergence?

After scanning the market for carriers that most closely resemble this desired model that offers just the right product elements for a full service carrier while still retaining the best practices of a low cost, the recommendation would be to look at what Air New Zealand has achieved.

Scale is not to be feared

Being at the very end of the continent, like Air New Zealand is, does not offer you too many opportunities to connect traffic. Air NZ makes the most of what opportunities it has. It has carved out a neat niche for itself as a pre-dominant gateway to the numerous Pacific Islands. It flies the very lucrative and very profitable US routes and it has the domestic NZ-Australia business. And it does all this while still being profitable. If this is not enough, it wins awards too (the genuine ones).

Air New Zealand has had to face a lot of low cost competition too but they adapted- Air New Zealand was one of the first full service carriers (Air Canada was the first) to simplify, unbundle and brand its fares to compete with the LCC’s.

For product, Air NZ has been a pioneer by introducing the Skycouch in the economy class. It was also quick to introduce a premium economy class right at the beginning of the trend. In general, Air NZ has built its brand in a way that appeals to a younger audience- whether being active on social media or driving an advertising campaign viral (We have nothing to hide) they have captured not just eyeballs but also imagination, something many airlines are trying to emulate.

Air NZ was also the first to introduce sharklets in its narrow body fleet. It is the also the first to fly the B-789.

One of the threats that consistently come up is the scale at which Middle Eastern carriers are operating and it is set to grow even larger as more aircraft are delivered. Combined with this scale is the unparalleled access to markets that allows them to deliver a ruthless cost advantage over any other carrier in the same space. Their labor force is largely from the sub-continent or low wage Asian countries, while a big part of their revenue source is Europe. Emirates is the very reason why no low cost long haul operator may ever succeed.

So how can other airlines, much smaller in size, compete? One answer was to join forces in alliances but it hasn’t quite helped smaller carriers or at least the jury is still out on this subject.

Here’s an unusual analogy on scale: Think of US forces in Afghanistan- As the US decided to increase its presence- add more soldiers on the ground, popularly termed the surge, Taliban responded by saying they now simply have a bigger, more visible target to hit.

Scale is not to be feared. The greater the scale of operations, more the complexity; slower the ability to respond. More the moments of truth generated more the likelihood that they would come out sub-par. Viewed from the angle of customer service, scale is most often a disadvantage. What is lost in cost competitiveness can be made up by agility. The evidence of this is also found in how US forces are changing- instead of becoming larger, they are becoming more agile. Just like Air NZ found its profitable niche (albeit it is argued it is far away from Emirates source markets), Tata could too.

Exploring Blue Oceans

What International routes can Tata-SQ fly and why?

Europe

Europe is a lost cause to attempt for an airline based in India. If there is a market that was lost in the interim 20 years that Tata did not get to start its services, it is Europe. With over 80 cities served by MEB3 (Middle East Big 3) and Turkish, it is nearly impossible to penetrate it profitably. A token route to London is often considered to be more attractive to local corporate clients in India but to make it profitable would be an uphill task with so much capacity already deployed. Instead a better idea is to tap into existing capacity by offering them more & deeper access into India, the Indian-Sub-continent & parts of Indochina, notably Myanmar. This helps SQ win back some customers to the group who may have been transferring via the Middle East to avoid backtracking that is unavoidable when transiting via Bangkok or Singapore. This could be achieved either by joining an alliance or better still by developing bilateral relationships with individual European airlines that matter.

North America

No Indian carrier can avoid looking at this market because of its volumes and yields but it is here that one finds the biggest overlaps with Air India. Today most of this market is served via hubs in Europe & will be increasingly served via the Middle East, as Jet joins the Etihad network, the opening of the US customs post in Abu Dhabi and with Emirates increasing the number of cities it serves in the US. Assuming that AI did not exist, there is a case for offering services to the East Coast gateway cities in much the same as AI does today. The only thing that can & must be done differently is to partner with the new-age carriers at these gateways like JetBlue in JFK and West Jet in Toronto.

Africa- Project Cheetah

It is Africa that offers Tata-SIA, the chance to explore Blue Ocean. This is a chance to connect North Asia- China, Korea and Japan to Africa via its hub in Delhi, in what will be, the fastest possible transit route. In doing so, Tata will compete with of course the Middle East hubs (and with Ethiopian & Kenya Air who have existing direct routes to China) but because a large slice of source market actually resides in India, it is hoped that with a superior product and a flawless hub, Tata could win, much like SIA did on the Kangaroo route.

A note on nomenclature

The Australia to Europe route has long been called the ‘Kangaroo-route’ because of the hop it requires at a mid-point such as Singapore or Bangkok. Similarly, the project to directly connect North Asia to Africa via a mid-point in India, could be called Project ‘Cheetah’, as it will be the fastest way to get from North Asia to Africa. Cheetah is the fastest animal on land.

Views on this blog are personal

2014-03-08T09:01:00.000+05:30

Myanmar- The Next Thailand

Myanmar, a nation of 53 million people is the latest & possibly one of the last big markets to open up to the Airline/travel Industry. Can it become the next Thailand?

Thailand is a nation of 70 million people and a neighbour to Myanmar. Both share many of the geographical characteristics including a long, thin peninsular tail that allows for a long beautiful coastline that is a huge draw for the tourists that Thailand has so successfully tapped into. In the last 15 years, tourist arrivals in Thailand went up from 8 million (1998) to more than triple the numbers- 27 million in 2013. To put it in perspective, it’s like the whole population, every single person, in Australia & New Zealand visiting Thailand every year. It wasn’t always like this. In 1970, Thailand use to get less than a million visitors. Myanmar received roughly 1 million visitors in 2012. Hence the comparison with Thailand seems appropriate.

Domestic Services

Currently, Myanmar lists down 43 Airports in total, of which several are unpaved and unsuitable for scheduled services (See map below with all Myanmar Airports marked).

As a matter of fact, only 18 seem to be connected with a scheduled service as per the schedules available.

See list of Airport below. Those highlighted yellow are the ones that have a scheduled service available today. Of this, 5 airports namely, Yangon, Mandalay, Nyaung-U/Bagan, Nay Pyi Taw- the new capital city and Myitkyina are those that could be considered right for frequency led growth.

In addition to this, Sittwe (previously Akyab) and Dawei (previously Tavoy) have potential for serious growth if the proposed port projects come through. Also Thandwe Airport in the west of the country receives a good number of flights with tourists bound for the Ngapali beach, which is widely considered the best developed beach resort in Myanmar today.But as in Thailand, there is no doubt a number of high potential beach destinations could be developed along the Andaman sea peninsular stretch of Myanmar.

International Services

After many years of isolation, Myanmar is finally rapidly gaining connectivity to the International world. Existing services are clearly skewed heavily towards the east of the country given the cultural & historical affinity, in particular to Thailand, as it has been a major transit point for International passengers, even when the country was relatively closed to the outside world. Singapore is the second most important destination, as most of the investment coming into the country is currently been channeled through the financial hub in Singapore.

Several new services started in 2012 with Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Taipei, China, Vietnam and Malaysia all quickly getting connected. Towards the west, Qatar Airways started services, with the hope of serving the Europe/US bound traffic. Condor also operated seasonal charters for 1 season. While Traffic to Europe will eventually develop with tourism numbers rising as more infrastructure comes online, particularly from the UK, Germany, France and possibly Russia just as is received by Thailand, it is too thin currently for a carrier from Myanmar to get into long haul Intercontinental routes that can only be done with wide-body aircraft. These markets could be easily accessed through hubs in the Middle East or through partnership with European carriers who may be interested in flying directly.

However, several critical gaps still remain on the short haul sectors that can be easily and profitably filled

Following current opportunities could be considered:

China

Myanmar is already relatively well connected to China, with services to Beijing, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Chengdu, Kunming and Nanning. However, services to Shanghai could be considered at some stage to further develop the tourist market.

India

India remains a huge opportunity. Only Kolkata and Gaya are connected today however, opportunity exists to reconnect the capital New Delhi to begin with. In addition, Imphal, capital of Manipur could be considered as an extension of Yangon-Sittwe flight, if the port project comes through.

Myanmar has a sizable population of Indian descent. They are either from Bengal or are of Tamil origins. Kolkata is already connected. However, Chennai could be connected. In addition to trade and VFR traffic, there is also a considerable opportunity for people traveling for medical treatment.

Indonesia

Jakarta is the only other major city in South East Asia that is not directly connected but has reasonably good traffic numbers to start direct services

Cambodia

Phnom Penh remains unconnected but shows potential with over 20,000 annual passengers.

Limitations

The Airport capacity at Yangon’s International airport is currently highly constraint. New capacity will take some time to materialize. Major expansion is not currently possible without sacrificing operational efficiency.

Unavailability of Visa on arrival, particularly for Indian and Chinese nationals is also a restrictive practice affecting faster tourism and trade growth.

2014-03-05T18:20:00.001+05:30

Moshi Moshi Japan

An account of life in Japan as a Gaijin Gakusei (roughly translated as a foreign student)

As the Northwest Airline 747-400 touched the runway at Narita, one could not help looking out to the surrounding rice paddies thinking about the Japanese farmer who held out his farm right at the end of the runway for 30 long years protesting against the Japanese government’s decision to build the Airport. But then, I was coming to no less a place than Japan- I was warned to expect to be on MARS. A Japanese soldier had been discovered in the dense tropical jungles of one of the isolated Philippines’ Islands some years ago and his story was still fresh in the media. He had been in hiding for 29 years with no idea about the war ending and a Japanese military official had to be brought in to make him surrender. I had come to expect some rather amusing idiosyncrasies during my time at Japan.

To tell you the truth I wasn’t disappointed for one moment. Just as we were entering the Airport premises there was a large canvas cheerfully greeting the arriving tourists with a boldly typed “Welcome To Japan” but just as a precaution that that message may be taken too literally, there was also another message in parenthesis just below, that said almost as an afterthought “…But please follow the rules…”. It was to become far clearer to me later on in life that that message, in many ways defined Japan. It hasn’t really closed itself to the world, but nor had it completely embraced it. Indeed every foreigner that ever visited Japan has a Japan story to tell.

There were many amusements for the new arrivals- Not the least of them was the ubiquitous vending machines, selling almost about everything- from piping hot English Tea in bright blue colored cans to, my personal favorite- A choice of shirt and tie combination that I saw in the business district of Ginza. There were the gloved & tuxedoed Taxi drivers driving shiny black Mercedes that made me feel like I was headed to attend the Oscars. The rest of world drove Toyotas as taxis so this appeared somewhat an anomaly. There were the numerous advertisements everywhere for English Teachers but only “Caucasians need apply”. There was the Pachinko and there were the Karaoke bars, Japanese stuff that had by now found its way to many places in the world but nothing like seeing them in their original place- a visit to one with my classmates was particularly memorable- those of them who hesitated to speak even one full sentence of English in the classroom were suddenly transformed into living versions of Beetles singing their songs in flawless English and flair. Elvis made its appearance too, complete with wigs with long sideburns that one could hire from the bar to complete the experience. And the women- they drank like fish & held on to their Sake.

As a poor starving student, too lazy to cook, I sought refuge in a near-by Mcdonald’s store complete with tiny steps drawn on the floor that led to the counter to ensure that the queue wasn’t just there, it was also a straight one. Only to find that the ‘Happy meal and Cha’ that I had ordered wasn’t making me happy at all as it threatened to break my budget for a full week. Then just by sheer chance & curiosity, I stepped into a Kai-ten (mini conveyor belt) Sushi parlour to the loud chants of Irasshaimase! And I was a convert right away. Not only was it far cheaper & healthier, I would have missed such an integral part of being in Japan.

For the record, I was in Japan to study at the Keio Business School at their Hiyoshi campus that fell mid-way between downtown Tokyo and the suburban train line to Yokohama. There wasn’t any lack of learning in the class either- we had scores of visits- each week- Most were outstanding- We went to see Nissan’s completed automated car plant in Yokohama- with large robotic arms doing most of the welding work (this is also where Carlos Ghosn, the French chief who is widely credited for turning around Nissan was to later make his mark). The plant had an integrated port to ship the cars just as they were completed so here was an example of Just in time manufacturing principle that Japanese first came up with. It was hard not be impressed with the very stylish & very suave office of Dentsu Advertising at Ginza. Infact, it may have been too stylish for me- it took me quite a while to figure out how the faucet at the sink worked. Designer stuff was everywhere. Yet, it was not all style- ample substance came out in their presentations about some of the campaigns they ran which must have impressed me, for I preserved them. Then, there were the guest lecturers from Coca-Cola and Ajinomoto (In India, it is sometimes used as generic name for Sodium bicarbonate that is probably a carry on from the pre-war times, but today it is a large Japanese drinks company). Coke explained how it introduced the Vending machine innovation in the Japanese market, because it could find no distributors ready to take up a Gaijin’s product and how, in Japan, it surprisingly sold more coffee than Coke. I had just read Peter Robinson’s very popular ‘Snapshots from Hell- Making of an MBA student’, so all of this was mildly amusing. Ajinomoto, not far behind, even made us come up with a new drink idea for them. I promptly came up with ginger-infused tea.

But through all this, what emerged was a larger picture of the Japanese consumer that though sometimes touched on the absurd, was deeply insightful. The rounder melon was far more expensive than the not so round one. Packaging for most products cost far more than the product itself. Most products were overdone with packaging. The marketing professor wasn’t coy about telling us that most Japanese women wore bras a cup size lower because that’s how men preferred them. For me, there were also the visits to the ANA offices at Haneda Airport. Again it is somewhat ironical that ANA, that has done so well lately, was in the throes of a restructuring in 1999 selling off most of its hotel assets. JAL was the Numero Uno carrier at the time. Things are exactly the opposite today. Skymark, the first Japanese LCC promoted by the discount travel agency H.I.S had just arrived with a Microsoft logo painted at the bottom of the aircraft that was quite a trend. And then there was the legendry Shinkansen. I couldn’t have asked for more by way of an education.

Evenings were time to be by oneself, because I couldn’t have afforded the expensive nightlife of Ginza- the choice was to sit in the Campus library or watch some TV in the confines of my room (Japanese of course). As Stanley Bing, the columnist at Fortune Magazine says, there was non-stop sports action on Japanese TV. People shown fishing. And apparently it was a popular program. Many an evening’s were spent watching Schwarzenegger’s films dubbed in Japanese. Some that had English sub-titles almost made me weep with joy. There was also Muthu complete with English sub-titles, the Rajnikant movie that for some very strange reasons was so liked in Japan that it broke all records. Then one day quite by chance, I saw something that has held me curious ever since. Amongst the various Japanese traditional celebrations, there is one, that is a like a little game played on the beach- it is part of a harvest festival I am told. Scores of young Japanese lads would get together and tie a white clothed tail to a player. Then they would light it up. The player’s task was to run as fast as he could to the beach to douse the fire on the tail. And this went on with everyone taking turns. If you are an Indian and if you were to see this on TV, what is the first thing that will come to your mind? Could it be that the legend of Ramayana somehow reached the shores of Japan & got incorporated in the local folklore? There is also the Kabuki- while it is a well-established Japanese Dance form, looking at it with my eyes it looked strikingly similar to Kerala’s Kathakali down to the movement of eyes and the costumes.

There was so much more that came my way just from the sights and sounds- At Hakone, a resort town roughly an hour’s drive away from Tokyo, I was to experience staying at a Ryokan, a traditional Japanese Inn & took a dip in Japan’s famed natural Onsens (Hot spring baths). One dip & a look at the beautiful cherry blossoms outside, and believe me, I was threatening to attempt a Haiku (Short Poems using imagery) using my classmates as audience. Then, at Kamakura’s Great Buddha temple, amidst thousands of messages written by devotees in katakana dedicated to this 13th century Bronze statue monument, I spotted one that was a touching tribute from a Japanese student written to his guru. I could read it because it was written in clean, legible Devanagari Hindi script. It was hard not to be spellbound.

There was ample opportunity to keep going back to Japan for work, as the student life came to an end but it could never be the same. What you can see & experience as a student in Japan, you can never otherwise. There is far too much convention for anyone to let down their guard and be misunderstood. Japan has changed in the intervening years since 1999 I am told. But I do hope that many of its peculiarities remain just the way I experienced them. Japan would be much the poorer, if it were to lose its love for the queer, for what is different. Because it is such a delight to experience, such an anti-dote to the conformity that the Japanese society is otherwise known for.

2014-02-26T00:43:00.000+05:30

Christening Tata-SQ’s new airline venture

This morning, it was interesting to read a news article on Tata-Singapore Airlines seeking a catchy brand name for its new airline venture in India.

When David Neelman, the serial airline entrepreneur was starting off his new airline venture in Brazil, he decided to come up with a competition, open to public, for finding a new name for it. The idea seems to have worked quite well as the Airline was name Azul Brazilian Airline- Azul in Portuguese is Blue. It’s crisp and short, easy to remember and pronounce. Besides, it naturally defined the colour scheme for the new airline making the job for the branding team probably much easier.

So what could be a good name for Tata-SIA’s new Airline? I am not sure if ‘catchy’ is an interpretation that came from the MINT journalist who wrote the story or if it is really the intent of the airline management- it is not unusual for full service airlines to go for a ‘catchy’ name for its low cost subsidiaries – Jazz, Rouge & Scoot are some examples. But full service airlines typically stick to the more orthodox names. The other adjective used in the news story is-‘freshness’ that is somewhat more helpful in guessing the objective of finding a neutral name that does not include either Tata or Singapore Airline in it.

I pondered on a number of names for a while, keeping in the mind the imagery they may convey. These included Lotus Air, Air Singha, Basil Air, Air Chakra or even Ginger but I gave up on all of them. Lotus is too closely associated with a political party. Singha is a Singaporean beer brand. Ginger too, is an existing low cost hotel brand owned by Tatas themselves. Basil as a name, although isn’t pre-existing to the best of my knowledge, does sound a bit bland and its imagery would be difficult to portray distinctively on an airline livery. Chakra on the hand is great on an aircraft tail and it’s highly symbolic as it appears on the Indian flag but the sound of the name does not quite do it for me.

Then, I started to look at Airline liveries across the world and a couple of them appealed to me quite a bit- Air Canada’s Maple leaf logo – very distinct, very identifiable and easily portrayed across all the brand touch points. It is also a national symbol for Canada.

Similarly, Air New Zealand’s fern- visually so appealing and rooted in symbolism as it is a Māori symbol for new life.

Maple leaf logo

Air New Zealand’s unfolding fern

Aer Lingus’ Irish Shamrock

This set me thinking about the uniquely Indian botanical symbols and what could be more uniquely Indian than the Pīpal tree and it’s uniquely shaped conical leaf. Infact, it is so deeply rooted in Indian religion and so steeped in mythology that its binomial name is Ficus Religiosa or the ‘sacred Fig’.

Buddha attained enlightenment meditating under this tree. It is also well known that its leaves were used for writing upon, so the bond with it is well established and the symbolism is unmistakable.

An image of a Pīpal leaf

There were atleast 2 other great reasons why it appealed to me:

First, companies like to use primary colours on their brand names and/or logos. Green is a primary colour. It goes very well with the idea of ‘Freshness’ (Pīpal is well established as an excellent supplier of oxygen which again fortifies the idea of freshness). Above all, Green, as a airline brand colour isn’t taken yet. (Jet Airways uses blue & yellow; Air India uses red; Kingfisher used a particularly aggressive hue of red too; Spicejet uses orange, Indigo uses..well..indigo as in colour indigo and so on. Green is a primary colour and a good hue of green can look quite attractive & distinct visually although it may not be very useful at other places such as on staff uniforms. But like Jet, these could follow a different color with probably a scarf or tie in green.

Second, I felt, Pīpal sounds exactly like People, so there is a nice ring to it. And there is a derived or perceptual meaning lent to the brand name even for those who may not know the deeper symbolic meaning.

My money therefore would be on Pīpal or Peepal Air. J

(Yes, I know People’s Express and yes I know it failed but this is about the only downside I see. Besides there is a group of people who want to revive it with the same name).

2014-02-19T21:37:00.002+05:30

Infusing life into Spice

An open letter to Spicejet Management

Your Q3 results prompted me to list down some suggestions that I thought may be of some use to you. Some of them will require fundamental changes in your business model which will (unfortunately) require fresh equity & money. Some others perhaps could be implemented more near term.

1. Fundamentals of your Business model

Your business model will have to change for more than several reasons and whether this happens before or after the infusion of fresh equity (most likely after, as this requires major investments & risks) it will have to happen sooner than later. In tangible steps this means 3 related points:

- You will have to find a way to be on the GDS: That your largest competitor is not on the GDS is just one of the reasons. That you operate in International markets is another and there are several more as you will read. Whether you use Hahn air for this, or you use TravelPort gateway to connect, this is critical missing piece. Like Easyjet, you need this to differentiate.

- Similarly, you will need to interline & code share: Jetblue does it, GOL does it, V-Australia does it as do several others. Yes, it will add complexity but it will also add revenues that you cannot otherwise have.

- Targeting the red eye bank

Take a look at international arrivals at Delhi airport from 2000 hours to 0200 hours- there are as many as 21 international airlines arriving not counting Indian & 3 Gulf biggies. (See list on the next page)

If an International carrier arrives after 20:00 hours, like UA does, given a minimum connection time of 2 hours, you will not get a single domestic connection until 5 am next morning (that’s about 7 hours later), if you are traveling beyond Delhi. (See chart on the next page)

This is a huge void & one that provides an opportunity.

List of International Arrivals into Delhi

At Mumbai too, while Jet Airways has a proper red-eye schedule bank (see chart below), there is sufficient reason to believe it may be withdrawn. Most of the foreign Airlines that feed this night bank are DIRECT competitors to EY. If the de-facto hub would be AUH, not Mumbai with as many as 26 Indian cities connected to AUH directly; there is no need for 9W to operate a night schedule bank. Moreover, to execute the plan to connect AUH, narrow body aircraft time will have to come from somewhere as there are very few new aircraft deliveries scheduled. I believe it will come from the aircraft that currently perform the night flights.

There are some obvious limitations:

Perhaps slot availability at night hours are an issue.

Changing the terminal Spice jet operates if required, will again adding complexity and cost.

Typically, given the shortage of flight deck crew in India, no airline wants to use more than 2 sets of crew per aircraft. An airline (especially an LCC) wants to start its schedule no sooner than 05:00 am and finish it before midnight, say at 23:00. With two, 8 hour pilot shifts one can manage to fly each plane with just 2 shifts. (With perhaps a built-in short gap in the afternoon dull hours). Those are the underlying economics. When you introduce a mid-night bank, it means that you have to either have aircraft on the ground or use more than 2 shifts of pilots. Both add to costs.

But a cost-benefit analysis needs to be done and I believe it will reveal that it is still beneficial to operate like this.

2. Fighting with dominance

This is a point about choosing which battles to fight. Historically, for whatever reasons, Spicejet seems to be have really lost the plot in the India’s largest market – Mumbai, it reflects in the capacity it has deployed in this market- it failed to take advantage of either Air India moving out or Kingfisher going out of business to secure slots in this highly congested airport. One can’t compete effectively without enough frequencies in the top 6 metro markets.

Nevertheless here are some suggestions:

The next 20 strategy

One look at the competitive capacity at metros is convincing enough to recommend that Spicejet must turn its attention at to the next 10-20 cities in terms of traffic. Your nearest competitor competes with frequencies mostly around the top 6 metros. Your other competitor is Mumbai-centric & increasingly Abu-Dhabi focused which means it is likely scale down its domestic network considerably. Your own routes to over 40 destinations seem to have far more spread than frequency, more breadth than depth. That could work, but you can’t operate over 300 flights in a 2-aircraft fleet & not have a node/ nodes, a center point (I want to avoid using the word hub as it has very set connotations in people’s mind) connecting them. All you are managing to do is in fact, subsidize your competitors when you connect a tier-3 city that previously had no scheduled air services- Passengers board your aircraft to a Metro from a Tier 2/3 city & if they are going beyond on a competitor, there is no price fencing to prevent this from happening. As an example, a passenger from Dehradun to Bangalore may travel on your flight to Delhi & then take Indigo from Delhi to Bangalore if the fare on this leg is cheaper on Indigo.

An example of vertical nodes

Spicejet will have to construct nodes to take control of traffic from tier 2-3 cities first through fencing achieved through O&D fares & eventually through a change to an O&D system that will give you super point of sale control. Its contemporaries Jetblue, Westjet & V Australia all went through similar changes.

While Spicejet is strongest at HYD amongst the 4 suggested nodes, operationally, Spicejet has an advantage over others if it chooses to set up a node out of ‘hot & high’ Nagpur, where the Q400’s perform relatively better than the ATR’s in summers. Also, as traffic congestion at Mumbai increases (just 3 prop flights today compared to more than 20 just 3 years back), transfer traffic will have to start to flow away from Mumbai.

Targeting 1-stop traffic

If IATA statistics have to be believed, about 5.2 million domestic India trips annually are still made 1 or 2 stop. As a percentage this is just 10% of the total traffic (this number seems understated as passengers may be buying 2 separate tickets that are difficult to account for as beyond traffic), but it is a big enough number by itself. It is interesting to see that this fits in exactly with the Next 10 strategy. The top 6 metros have nearly all of its traffic arriving non-stop. The next 10 (tier-2) has about 85% and for Tier-3 cities it drops to below 60%. (See classification chart below)

Targeting 1-stop traffic isn’t new. Emirates does it for long haul. If the total elapsed time remains competitive this could succeed in short haul too.

3. Near perfect price information

If Price is the strategic P in India not Product, unlike let’s say in Japan (where things are also changing now) and even if Spicejet is the lowest cost producer (& you definitely are not the lowest!), it is still not in your favor to let the market have perfect information on the lowest fares as it interferes with you ability to sell-up. There is near perfect pricing information available today at one’s finger tips. This isn’t helping. Take the Mobile operators as an example- there are so many price offerings offered through multiple distribution channels that it is impossible to discern which one is the cheapest. Customers view to pricing is obscured through use of smart packaging.

Yes, creating multiple price points will increase audit complexity so the solution isn’t easy and it has some dependency on IT, but at some point you will have to think about it.

4. Blanket across the board discounts?

When launching promotional fares, typically it appears this is an ‘across the board’ exercise to raise load factors system wide with some more successful flights getting fewer discounted seats while others less popular ones getting far more.

First, dropping fares creates its own distortions in demand patterns that are impossible to either predict accurately or measure. Second, you are training the market to buy down permanently, setting up your revenue management for failure as far as the months of Feb/Mar are concerned. Any (and every) RM professional will/should tell you his/her worst nightmare is ‘Spiral down’- a name for a phenomenon about a company charging its customers less even when they were willing to pay more.

Third, while ultimately discounts must be offered based on flight level demand forecasts, some attention also has to be paid to the share of capacity out of a city. Spicejet owns a dominant 1/3 rd share of seats out of Chennai market but at Mumbai, it is at the 4th place & not much ahead of Go air. Which market would you much rather offer discounts- at Mumbai or at Chennai?

Are blanket advertised discounts the only option? Take an example: In the last few months of Kingfisher’s existence, even with highly irregular operations some consolidators were still buying deeply discounted seats in bulk and were able to push them through. There were still some people who were willing to bet on a 50% discount on a fare even if the flight may leave delayed or not leave at all. If an airline that was in the throes of shutting could still move inventory, albeit deeply discounted, could Spicejet use select consolidators to sell discounted inventory discretely, instead of offering across the board discounts? It is the reason an airline cultivates consolidators & OTA’s. It is the reason an airline even needs a sales force.

5. Value is passé, Smart is in

Or more accurately, value as a proposition, as a brand promise is already taken, by your nearest LCC competitor. If an airline runs on time, offers unparalleled frequency, has an acceptable product & all this comes at a low enough price, how else can one define value? You can plaster innumerable posters as being The value carrier to send out the message on what you want to be but believe me, that slot in the prospect's mind is already taken, it’s gone. Once that happens, you may propose the positioning, but the customer doesn't accept it. He positions you as per what he perceives you are. The gurus of marketing say a product has to own a word in the prospect's mind.Take the case of the Tata Nano & its repositioning- not as an entry level car but as a second car in the household- by now a celebrated case study. What are the lessons for you?

What word could Spicejet own in the mind of a prospect that she does not already associate with a competitor?

Yes Value is taken. But is Smart still available? How can an Airline lay claim to being Smart? To answer that, one has to look at who is traveling on your planes. For much of the 80-90’s only the top management of a company was traveling. Today, however, it is the top/middle management that forms the bulk- safe to assume in the age group 30-40. Is there a case for in-flight connectivity? I leave it to your marketing team define Smart for your travelers.

And before I forget to mention, on a lighter note, run as far away from the sandwiches as you can, because that too, as an in flight meal offering, is taken. Consider the humble (& nimble) Samosa- after all you are ‘S-p-i-c-e’ jet. I once visited an eatery that offered samosas with 32 different fillings.

Notes:

- This is an outsider’s view. There are many minor details that one cannot know from the outside.
- All information used here is available in the public domain

2013-12-30T20:39:00.001+05:30

(With due apologies to Nobel Laureate Tagore)

Where the DGCA is without fear and the rules are held high
Where the skies are free
Where the airports have not been rendered useless
By absence of periphery walls
Where the logbooks & stats report nothing but the truth
Where tireless reforms stretches the industry towards perfection
Where the regulator hasn't lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of more regulation
Where MOCA is led forward by WE (us)
Into ever widening planning and action
Into that heaven of (aviation) freedom, my father, let my country awake

(Original)
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake
(Rabindranath Tagore)

Fwd: Book list 2014

2013-10-16T17:26:00.001+05:30

Here's what I want to read in 2014, if I can get my hands on them: Book number 10 remains open for suggestions.

1. Understanding Air France 447 ( www.understandingAF447.com)

http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Air-France-447-ebook/dp/B00E5W9YZG/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_nC?ie=UTF8&colid=1RWRCH1E7JDWQ&coliid=I3LJQCBL18LTHJ

2. Shaking the Skies- the untold story of change in Aviation since 9/11

http://www.amazon.com/Shaking-Skies-11-International-Organisation/dp/1907794360/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_nC?ie=UTF8&colid=1RWRCH1E7JDWQ&coliid=IWGQU80GHCWYY

3. A life time in long haul- Qantas Pilot flying stories

http://www.amazon.com/Lifetime-Longhaul-Qantas-Stories-ebook/dp/B00AET1SF8/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_nC?ie=UTF8&colid=1RWRCH1E7JDWQ&coliid=I1XF6WC0OVLGTI

4. QF 32

http://www.amazon.com/QF32-ebook/dp/B007KTLQ5W/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_nC?ie=UTF8&colid=1RWRCH1E7JDWQ&coliid=I245D0KKJTFXLG

5. Northstar over my shoulder- A flying life

http://www.amazon.com/North-Star-over-Shoulder-ebook/dp/B000FC0SDW/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_nC?ie=UTF8&colid=1RWRCH1E7JDWQ&coliid=I31QQA8SKLJ705

6. Full upright and locked position: Not so comfortable truths about Air travel today.

http://www.amazon.com/Full-Upright-Locked-Position-Not-So-Comfortable/dp/0393081109/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pd_nS_nC?ie=UTF8&colid=1RWRCH1E7JDWQ&coliid=I2Z1UATK1WILQI

7. Flight Path: How Westjet is flying high in Canada's most turbulent industry

http://www.amazon.com/Flight-Path-WestJet-Turbulent-Industry/dp/0470834366/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_S_nC?ie=UTF8&colid=1RWRCH1E7JDWQ&coliid=I1L1505VHP2YCZ

8. The Shadow world: Inside the global arms trade ( Not airline but related)

http://www.amazon.com/The-Shadow-World-Inside-Global/dp/B00AZ8AOBW/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_nC?ie=UTF8&colid=1RWRCH1E7JDWQ&coliid=I335MVY4AMQPYM

9. The descent of Air India

http://www.amazon.in/gp/product/938295113X/ref=junglee&tag=juamz1-21

10. Which book?????

2013-08-28T00:02:00.001+05:30

Something that I read in my school books & still inspires me

आग जलनी चाहिए
- दुष्यन्त कुमार (Dushyant Kumar)

हो गई है पीर पर्वत-सी पिघलनी चाहिए
इस हिमालय से कोई गंगा निकलनी चाहिए

आज यह दीवार, परदों की तरह हिलने लगी,
शर्त लेकिन थी कि ये बुनियाद हिलनी चाहिए

हर सड़क पर, हर गली में, हर नगर, हर गाँव में
हाथ लहराते हुए हर लाश चलनी चाहिए

सिर्फ हंगामा खड़ा करना मेरा मकसद नहीं,
सारी कोशिश है कि ये सूरत बदलनी चाहिए

मेरे सीने में नहीं तो तेरे सीने में सही
हो कहीं भी आग, लेकिन आग जलनी चाहिए।

Fwd: Reading list 2013

2013-05-22T18:13:00.001+05:30

Got time? May want to read these:

Aviation Reading list for 2013 (Revised):

1. Stormy Skies http://www.amazon.com/Stormy-Skies-Paul-Clark/dp/0754678873/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369213063&sr=1-4&keywords=The+Stormy+skies

2. China Airborne http://www.amazon.com/AirborneCHINA-AIRBORNE-Fallows-May-15-2012-Hardcover/dp/B008KUDVN0/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369213581&sr=1-5&keywords=china+airborne+james+fallows

3. Revenue Integrity http://www.amazon.com/introduction-airline-Revenue-Integrity-ebook/dp/B00B1QE7YC/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369214239&sr=1-1&keywords=Revenue+Integrity+Paul+Rose

4. Looking Beyond the Runway http://www.amazon.com/Looking-Beyond-Runway-Nawal-Taneja/dp/1409400999/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369214651&sr=1-1&keywords=Looking+beyond+the+runway

5. Flight Paths http://www.amazon.com/Flightpaths-Geoffrey-Thomas/dp/0975234145/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369215218&sr=1-3&keywords=flightpaths

6. Airline Payment handbook http://www.amazon.com/Airline-Payments-Handbook-Complete-Transport/dp/0957273002/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369215333&sr=1-1&keywords=Airline+payments+handbook

7. A life in full Flight http://www.amazon.com/Michael-OLeary-Life-Full-Flight/dp/1844880567/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369216203&sr=1-1&keywords=a+life+in+full+flight

8. The 49ers http://www.amazon.com/49ers-True-Story-John-Warham/dp/1846245877/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369216255&sr=1-1&keywords=the+49ers

9. Fields of Air http://www.amazon.com/Fields-of-Air-ebook/dp/B0092QUQIY/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369216295&sr=1-1&keywords=Fields+of+Air

10. Shaking the Skies http://www.amazon.com/Shaking-Skies-Aviation-Organizational-Turnaround/dp/1907794360/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369216327&sr=1-1&keywords=Shaking+the+skies

11. Aircraft Finance http://www.amazon.com/Aircraft-Finance-Strategies-Managing-Turbulent/dp/1604270713/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369216361&sr=1-1&keywords=Aviation+Finance

12. Foundations of Airline Finance http://www.amazon.com/Foundations-Airline-Finance-Bijan-Vasigh/dp/0754677702/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369216394&sr=1-2&keywords=Aviation+Finance

2013-01-21T17:34:00.001+05:30

Book shelf 2013

Month	Titles
Jan	China Airborne
Feb	Looking Beyond the Runway
Mar	A life in full flight
Apr	The 49ers
May	Fields of Air
Jun	Buying the big Jets
Jul	Stormy Skies
Aug	Foundations of Airline Finance
Sep	Aircraft Finance
Oct	Fault lines
Nov	Romancing the balance sheet
Dec	Banking book

I hope to be able to read the following books this year. Of these, the only one that I do not currently have with me is Paul Clark's Stormy Skies.

2013-01-04T19:02:00.001+05:30

My Bookshelf in 2012

So, here's how my bookshelf looked in the year gone by:

Land of Naked People- Encounters with Stone Age Islanders

This book on Andaman Islands completely changed my thinking what 'development' on the island should mean. Madhusree Mukherjee has done a commendable job (she has also authored another book called Churchill's secret war). Corruption amongst this Union territories administration was an eye-opener. I still believe responsible tourism in some parts of the Islands can co-exist with saving the tribal population on them but the means to get to this end is something that must see a radical shift. Mass tourism of the sort at say Phuket, which is close by, is not for the Andamans. Instead Maldives could be a role model for its development. The Airport at Port Blair (interestingly built by the invading Japanese during the Second World War) must be built up further and made into an International one.

The Racist guide to South Africa

This is apparently quite a popular book in South Africa, only I did not know about it until a friend urged me to read it and even provided a copy. Stereotypes versions of each race are explored and the book is just a delight to go through. Surprisingly, it is such an excellent guide for a foreigner to understand South Africans and their prejudices (and pride), much better than reading the politically correct 'Culture shock' guides. I even made a personal note to someday attempt a similar racist guide to India- one thing is for sure, it won't short of material.

The Checklist Manifesto

Atul Gawande is a well known surgeon in the US and he writes as well. The year before this, when my daughter was born, I read through his first book: Better- a Surgeon's notes on Performance. I didn't need to read it to value checklists, but it just enhances one's belief in what systematic functioning could achieve. It is a good book to give to youngsters and I did give it to a young interning doctor at the hospital where my daughter was being operated, which is not to say it is only meant for medicos. It is equally useful for others.

The Real Heroes

This book is an offshoot of the TV program of the same name aired on CNN-IBN. It tells you of the life of ordinary Indians who, against insurmountable odds are something to make a difference to change status quo. Again, a hugely inspiring book and this is where I first learnt about Mary Kom, the boxer. Also about another 23 remarkable people, who inspire to act, to do something to change status quo and not just passively accept it. And those who think Indians don't love sport, read it to believe to what extent some of us have sacrificed. Only for want of better resources these efforts haven't yet produced world champions.

The Tiger that Isn't- Seeing through the world of numbers

This is a fantastic book and the authors also had a popular BBC show. A good read for Journos who have make sense of number and do so in as little a space as possible. One sample: 'Average does not mean middle'.

Adapt

Tim Harford is back. While this book disappointed me, I stuck through it. Worth a read.

The Great Arc- the dramatic tale of how India was mapped and Everest was named

This is John Keay's classic that I looked for 5 years before I found a copy in a seconds' bookshop, as the book was out of print. Imagine creating a GPS like system by physically measuring the Earth's surface in an age where they were no computers and all records were physically kept. This was such a remarkable feat and the effort it took was so humongous that it took decades to complete. Ironically, the man who started it all was not only forgotten, even his grave was remained unknown until the author discovered it. What a pity. The other thing that caught my attention while reading this book is the story of Radhanath Sikdar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radhanath_Sikdar), a Calcutta based mathematician who is much lesser known than Ramanujan for example, perhaps because he never stepped out of India. But he was known as the Computer in the Trigonometry survey of India program and he was the first one to calculate the height of Mount Everest. In an independent India, Mount Everest may well have been Mt. Sikdar. But George Everest, the one after whom the peak is named and was by far a more well known personality having stuck through the progress of the survey for years.

Sway

This is a book on why sometimes, even the best trained amongst us, act in irrational ways. It is a remarkable book in the genre of the recent books on psychology.

What the Dog Saw

Malcolm Gladwell is by now a celebrated writer. This is his first book that I read- there are great chapters describing various things- of which how dogs interpret body language and hence the title. Definitely recommended reading for those uninitiated on Gladwell.

The Great Indian Middle Class

This is an old best seller by Pavan K. Verma that I picked up once again despite having read it before. It is still too early to say whether Middle class is changing its political behavior as to bring about real change in the Indian society, but we can definitely see churnings even as I write this. This book provides a great understanding of the Middle Class in the political sense and someone who expects to follow Indian politics must read it. For me, what was compelling was the parallels I could draw with whats happening in the South African society today and how the Black Middle Class here, although it does yet realize this, much less exercise it, has the power to change the politics of this country.

Butter Chicken in Ludhiana

This too was a bestseller released in 1995 and Pankaj Sharma's first book, he has gone on a long way, but this book, luckily for him, coincided with the time India was seeing its first real consumer culture. He managed to capture what this had done to the towns and cities across India in a very real way- in other words this is just a UAI (Usage, Attitude, and Image) study minus the marketing speak. If you want to understand the psychology behind the consumer in small town India, this is the book to read.

Lucknow Boy

Journalism has boomed in India – there are 100's of me too TV channels as there are print magazines, so I thought it will be a good idea to read about the media. There is a lot of gossip, which has no purpose except keeping the reader hooked and but there is also a good sense one gets of how a publication functions and the balancing act its editor must perform despite pressures.

That was it. It was a surprise to go through this list myself- not one of these books were on my planned reading list for 2012, but then I never let my plans overtake my instincts.

2013-01-02T20:34:00.000+05:30

Connecting the Heart of India

Take a large map of India and spread it across the boardroom table to accommodate all of it. Next, take a black marker and draw a line beginning from the North in Kashmir across the middle of the landmass, through peninsular India close to the 82.5 degrees Indian Standard Time Meridian, down to the extreme South till you reach Kanyakumari, as if to dissect the country into two vertically equivalent halves. Chances are that the line will either go through or fall close by the cities of Delhi, Nagpur, Hyderabad and Bangalore in that order.

Nagpur is widely considered the geographical center of India, as it is equiv-distant (about a 1000 km's) from the 4 major metros of Chennai, Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai. It will be another half a decade before Nagpur gains some traction but go right ahead and mark it (unlike the politicians, who have largely ignored it), perhaps by drawing a small circle around it. Now draw a huge cross across the map such that the lines intersect each other at Nagpur. Think of it as a model of an hourglass. 2 Hourglasses in fact, placed at right angles to each other. Try and count the number of cities that fall inside these 2 hourglasses and have usable Airports.

In 1962, a young 18 year old Yale student wrote a paper for an economics class, outlining overnight delivery services in a computer information age. He had chanced upon an article on the Indian Night Air Mail Service that was started in 1949 to deliver mail overnight in one of the world's first hub and spoke operation. Under this system, the four main cities of India also happened to form each of the four corners of a diamond- New Delhi to the north, Bombay to the west, Calcutta to the east, and Madras to the south. Connecting these cities was a central location at the city of Nagpur. He based his paper on this design and went on to found a company in 1973 that is called FedEx. His name is Fred Smith. Fed Ex rose to flourish but Nagpur, the very place that formed the basis of its idea, fell onto bad times with a decrepit, dilapidated Airport that saw fewer and fewer aircraft with every passing year. Soon it was part of the dusty bowels of India which only saw some action in an election year.

Meanwhile, Mahindra, an Indian auto-giant went on to buy an Australian aircraft company called Gippsaero. Gippsaero is much past its prime but does have a stable of small aircraft that are being revitalized with this new investment to serve the sub-20 seat aircraft market that many believe can take strong roots in India and revive Air taxi type commuter Aviation. For one, Mahindra Aircraft are tipped to cost one-third of their nearest rivals such as the ubiquitous Cessna's and Twin Otters and others. Can Nagpur see its old glory days once again once these aircraft make it to the market in 2014-15?

Have you counted those Airports inside the hourglass yet? I once counted more than 3 dozen usable airports within 1 hour of flying distance from Nagpur. Many of these are not in a good state and length of their runway is a limitation even for an aircraft like ATR-42 but Mahindra's GA-10 and GA-18 can easily negotiate these.

First, the Airports need to be revitalized- not just the runways and the non-existent passenger terminals, but also the basic navigational equipment, equipment for passenger operations such as screening, security and other Airport staff needs to be mobilized. Most Airports in the region don't have any fuel storage facility, nor have any night landing facilities that negatively impact a passenger operation. There are several limitations but a completely new aviation market will open up if this happens.

The cost of operations are so high, that with a sub-20 seat aircraft, any company would need to have at least 20 aircraft before a sustainable scale could be achieved to continue its existence (despite the low set up costs with Mahindra aircraft). With enough incoming traffic from metro cities on larger airline companies coming to Nagpur, a feeder that connects most of central India, can most definitely thrive. There are several examples of small feeder carriers (such a Cape Air) in the US. And Mahindra would need to ensure an eco-system that supports and nurtures this- for example, it simply can't expect to come and sell aircraft right away- because such an eco-system does not exist today, it will also have to invest in training facility for the pilots, engineers, technicians, mechanics, taking the burden off from a company that will operate its aircraft.

This is not a new approach at all. Although Nagpur is "Hot and High" (Temperatures here reach a staggering 49 degree Celsius in the summer months and Nagpur is at the elevation of 310.5 meters) that makes operational efficiency of the aircraft suffer, conditions are slowly developing for it to be tapped as a feeder Hub for the North-South or East-West traffic flows that are large enough, to reconsider such a network design.

2012-12-27T17:34:00.001+05:30

What is in a name? - Part II

Col Slade- Do the deal, Charlie. Take it! Go to Harvard

Charlie- I can't do that

Col. Slade- Why Not?

Charlie- Because I have a conscience, you know. Its some things you just can't do

Col. Slade- Conscience, Charlie? When were you born, son? Around the time of the Round Table? Hah. Haven't you heard? Conscience is dead

Charlie- No, I haven't heard

Col. Slade- Well, then, take the fucking wax outta your ears! Grow up! It's fuck your buddy. Cheat on your wife. Call your mother on Mother's Day. Charlie, it's all shit. You're gonna have a tough time in this world

So goes the exchange between Charlie, a prep school student at Baird School and Col. Frank Slate, a retired and blind Colonel in the United States Army. It is a scene from the movie Scent of a woman which won Al-Pacino an Oscar in the leading role and went on to win many Golden Globe awards as well.

For some background, Charlie has been promised a seat at Harvard by the Principal, if he squeals the names of the students who vandalized the Principal's new Jaguar. Col. Slade, who has seen much in life, exhorts him to go ahead and make the deal but Charlie is not comfortable with the idea of "selling out"? The movie sets you thinking but we will come back to it.

Many years back, in the early eighties, my family was traveling to the Himalayan Shrine of Badrinath. Travel conditions in the hills were tough- there was no luxury accommodation available then, food along the way was very basic and since we couldn't afford a private taxi, the trip was made on a U.P. Roadways bus. Tired and famished after the whole day of bus journey on narrow potholed roads pockmarked with recent landslides, we finally reached the town of Joshimath. It was bitterly cold and getting dark, so finding accommodation was first priority. There were no cell phones or even land line phones in those days, and a guesthouse, the only one at Joshimath, we had planned to stay in, had no system of reserving accommodation. It followed a first come first serve system. On enquiring, my father was told he must look elsewhere as all rooms were taken. My father pleaded with the manager, letting him know that he was traveling with little children but the manager was in no mood to reconsider. After considerable time went by, My father was about to give up when he happen to mention that he has traveled all the way from Pantnagar University on this pilgrimage. The Manager was in conversation with another party and only half listening to my father but on hearing this, he signaled my father to wait. Further conversation ensued during which the manager learnt that my father was a professor and taught at the university. Lo and Behold, there was a sea-change in his attitude- he still held that all his rooms were taken, but now he was willing to accommodate us by vacating the one that he occasionally used himself. Slightly baffled by this sudden change of heart, my father profusely thanked the manager and we went on to stay in the room. This incident was much discussed and narrated later on and it was concluded that the good reputation and influence that Pantnagar University enjoyed led the manager to reconsider his decision and go the extra mile to help us. Nor was this an isolated incident- I was to repeatedly see people, even hardened policemen, trained to sniff out goons and mischief makers, melt with high regard or even slightly bow at just the mention of the name of the institution, such was its' reputation. Not just in the hills, but also in big cities like Delhi. This is even more remarkable considering there was no TV or internet or social media in those days and all that one knew was through word of mouth.

In his book The Bonsai Manager, R. Gopala krishnan describes an infamous case of misappropriation of funds at Tata Finance and how the company, when it discovered wrongdoing, immediately decided to make it public and handled it with utmost urgency and transparency with the end goal of making sure that Tata's name as a company was not sullied. The company risked losing its business and its customers by doing so and had the option of not disclosing anything at all but it decided its credibility was at stake.

Swiss Airlines, built on the platform of quality, once discovered a problem with its aircraft engines and decided to ground the entire fleet, until such time that the problem was discovered and fixed, at a huge blow to its finances.

15 years back, in an MBA class room, a professor asked us who our hero was in the corporate world, a role-model, someone who we looked upto. Most all hands went up, amongst them majority of the girls, for Rebecca Mark (the business media had christened her "Mark the shark" for her aggressive deal-snatching capabilities). Young minds were enamored, there was awe and even some measure of reverence. Her aggression was clearly a virtue many wanted to emulate and since access to boardrooms were still some distance away, copious amounts of this quality was at display during classroom participation. There is a front page news story picture of Rebecca Mark etched in my mind meeting Shiv Sena's chief Bal Thackeray to discuss the Enron plant in Maharashtra. The Enron scandal hadn't happened yet and the list of her fans in business schools was particularly long. Enron collapsed later due to a number of questionable and illegal financial practices, and Arthur Andersen, their auditors, were subsequently convicted of obstruction of justice for its part in the scandal. The reputation damage to Arthur Andersen was immediate and catastrophic, and its clients fled in droves. It made no difference that the conviction was overturned by the Supreme Court in 2005 — by then, it had lost all its customers. Although never formally dissolved as a partnership, there's little chance that Arthur Anderson will ever again be a viable business.

In the world of business this is formally recognized as Reputation Risk- damage to the value of a company's brand name cause by negative public opinion. It can happen for a number of reasons (mostly fraud and financial wrong doing) and can have a debilitating effect on shareholder value. Conversely, in accounting the concept of good business practices, good reputation, is also duly recognized and attributed value as Goodwill. These intangible concepts are ingrained in a world that, above all, usually only accords value to hard numbers.

Yet individuals, it appears, sometimes have difficulty clearly understanding what is at stake. Some confuse it with accumulating money or power. Others believe that their fame has made them surpass the usual boundaries of convention that apply to other people. But fame alone does not determine name, leave along good name. Fame is fleeting. Your fame is dependent on other peoples' choices. Your name depends on your own. Fame is temporary; it is, for most part, a mirage. Your name lasts a lifetime, infact it goes beyond a generation. The list of people who learnt this lesson the hard way is long- Jack Welch, whose fall from grace was quick and steep or more recently General Petraeus, a highly decorated officer of the US army, who became fodder for lewd jokes after his extra-marital affairs came to light. People who fell from grace perhaps never thought this could happen to them. They thought they were beyond the rule of law. Rajat Gupta of Mckinsey was looked upon as a realm of what was possible to achieve, a rags to riches story he went on to receive some of the highest accolades in the business world, but now history will remember him as an infamous crook who tried to accumulate illegal riches. To his credit, at least he seems to know that he has lost his reputation by admitting as much publicly.

Rajesh Khanna, had just about died when articles about his misconduct and his personal vendetta against his co-stars began to appear in the press but Balraj Sahani is still remembered as a gentleman actor, two generations after. Azharuddin once hailed as a cricketer of unparalleled talent, was tainted forever with match fixing charges. Isn't it a shame that a man who debuted with 3 centuries in a row, whose mere turn of a wrist could send a bowl to the boundary, would be remembered as someone who brought disrepute to the Gentleman's game? If there have been people who, in one stroke tarnished their reputations, there are also those who went to great lengths to safeguard their reputations, however intangible an asset it may be. Amitabh Bachchan fought hard to extricate his name from the Bofors scandal and repeatedly said to the media that it was important to him that his name was cleared. Kapil Dev, when accused of match fixing cried like a child on national television.

And yet, the message is lost on the young men and women of today. Lured by the riches of corporate life, dreams of flying in a corporate jet, owning an entire island or amassing unaccountable money, they are willing to gamble anything. The haphazard growth of the media has resulted in a body blow to its ethics -citizens of the fourth estate leave much to be desired but even they can't escape the fact that their most precious commodity is the trust that their readers put in their word. Can Barkha Dutt of NDTV claim the same status of unadulterated respect anymore after the Radia tapes came to light? Probably not. You can write a 1000 letters of protest or refute the charges of misconduct but public trust is frail. The only thing that you cannot redeem in a lifetime, once lost, is your name. Not definitely in an age where news spreads faster than fire. Of all the possessions of man, there is nothing as fragile as one's name. It is not without reason that self esteem and reputation appear nearly at the top of the pyramid in Maslow's theory.

This brings us back to Charlie, who, beyond the maturity of his years, decides his principles are far more important than buying his way into Harvard. There are parallels to this in the corporate life- Ask yourself if you ever sold out your colleagues to make your way to the top? Did you build a business on the misery of your employees and then, did not remember to reward them? Our day to day life throws innumerably difficult questions at us- these are moments of truth, moments that test our integrity, moments that are a decisive test of our character. Whatever your principles may be, you play this game once and none other but your own conscience is the referee. Neither is this game a short sprint. It is a marathon that lasts 40 years of your working life. You waiver once and you may never recover.

Every morning I take the 20 minutes drive towards the Airport where my office is. The highway is full of billboards that are selling anything from liquor to cars to property- not generally a source you would expect to receive much useful information, leave alone find any wisdom but then, one day, unexpectedly, I noticed this written in bold fonts: Win, but not at any cost and 5 minutes later, a second one with an even better message: Stake everything but your name.

Here's a third one to consider: Ask yourself What is in a name? And if you allow your conscience, it may be heard faintly telling you: Well, my friend just about everything.

2012-12-27T17:19:00.001+05:30

What's in a name?- Part I

It is safe to assume that you may have seen Gladiator, a blockbuster released in the year 2000 that won no less than 5 academy awards, including for best picture.

Allow me therefore, to run you through a short part of its brilliant screenplay.

To give you some background, Marcus Aurelius is the old king of Rome; Commodus is his son and Maximus his brave General. As the king is getting old, and a major war has been won against Germania, he decides to have 2 separate conversations with his son and his general on succession:

Marcus Aurelius: Are you ready to do your duty for Rome?
Commodus: Yes, father.
Marcus Aurelius: You will not be emperor.
Commodus: Which wiser, older man is to take my place?
Marcus Aurelius: My powers will pass to Maximus, to hold in trust until the Senate is ready to rule once more. Rome is to be a republic again.
Commodus: Maximus?
Marcus Aurelius: Yes. My decision disappoints you?
Commodus: You wrote to me once, listing the four chief virtues: Wisdom, justice, fortitude and temperance. As I read the list, I knew I had none of them. But I have other virtues, father. Ambition. That can be a virtue when it drives us to excel. Resourcefulness, courage, perhaps not on the battlefield, but... there are many forms of courage. Devotion, to my family and to you. But none of my virtues were on your list.

Marcus Aurelius: There is one more duty that I ask of you before you go home.
Maximus: What would you have me do Caesar?
Marcus Aurelius: I want you to become the protector of Rome after I die. I will empower you to one end alone, to give power back to the people of Rome and end the corruption that has crippled it.
Marcus Aurelius: Do you accept this great honor that I have offered you?
Maximus: With all my heart, no.
Marcus Aurelius: Maximus that is why it must be you.

Maximus: And Commodus?

Marcus Aurelius: Commodus is not a moral man. You have known that since you were young. Commodus cannot rule. He must not rule. You're the son that I should have had. Commodus will accept my decision. He knows that you command the loyalty of the army.

Dwell on this for a while, read it again if you will, paying special attention to the words that I have underlined. We will come back to it.

Cut to modern times: A young man, all of 20 years old, from one of the poorest slums in the city, comes in for an interview and is hired. The young man confides in me his ambition to become CEO, one day. I fall off my chair, recover my composure enough to ask a few polite questions and get to understand that from great deprivation is born great ambition, whether deserved or not.

All around me, people are going crazy seeking high titles. Never mind the fortune at the bottom of pyramid, people are busy inverting the corporate pyramid to a point where designations have lost all meaning. In an airline company, where I worked, amongst a 50,000 strong global workforce, there were just 4 Vice Presidents. Today, youngsters who may have just stopped wetting their pants seek to be "We-Pee" just as they graduate out of their MBA schools. Naturally then, with great sense of innovation, and in the universal spirit of accommodating everyone with ambitions overflowing, corporate hierarchies too have evolved- today, you have a deputy COO, a senior Deputy COO, an assistant and associate COO, an 'about to be COO' and several other versions, never mind how incredibly stupid it all sounds. That's just the modern version of a 'flat' organization. Flat at the top that is. If you want to find out who really does what, forget it. It may be a better idea to simply play a game of Sudoku, a puzzle it is too, but at least it has some logic.

I receive an unsolicited call from a recruitment agent (by now an unavoidable inconvenience if you have to stay in the 'game') who, without making any apologies for it, blurts out the details of an opening, in a crass, rehearsed tone, even before I can so much as acknowledge her. When I ask her about the company which she is recruiting for, her tone hushes, voice drops to a whisper, as if she was about to break a massive state secret to me, bigger than what Wikileaks could ever imagine. At other times, recruitment agents have questioned me about my title being 'just' Manager. I immediately correct their folly, drawing their attention to my resume and pointing out that once, long back, I was a Senior Manager. That's by way of jest. But people take titles so seriously these days, that very often when I crack this one, I have to explain that I am joking. But seriously, what's with the titles?

There's the famous Harvard case study of a Japanese ship welder, who, before he could get into the coveted job of welding the hull of the ship spends 100's of hours honing his skills as a welder. Today of course the robots have taken over this precision welding job, but the example is to illustrate the importance of spending time in the field. Raghuvir Sahay, a theatre artist and the main cast in the movie Peepli live, says he picked up his talent acting in Natak Mandalis (folk theatres) that travel around the country. A celebrated chef in Taj, sets aside 1 full month to travel across rural areas in coastal India to learn original coastal recipes.

Read Outliers (Authored by Malcolm Gladwell, by now celebrated for books like What the dog saw, or The Tipping point) The central premise of the book is exactly same: that anyone who has achieved some degree of expertise in his/her chosen field has started early and spent at least 10,000 hours honing their skills that are required to become an expert. He goes on to give several examples including that of Beatles and some accomplished athletes.

Or don't read the book. Go and see '3 Idiots' – What is the message in the movie? If you think the popularity of the movie, is any indication that people are 'getting it', I can give you a nice gold bordered certificate that you are an optimist.

I recall, long ago, as a young person I would say hello every morning to a photo of Sir Sean Connery, bearded, in a black suit with a bow tie, almost bald but not devoid of any of his charisma, pinned right infront of my eyes on a board over looking my desk. I had torn it out of a magazine with an accompanying interview which had the following quote from him in large italics: "I have met many educated people, but few who have the insatiable appetite to know, to create, to be curious, to be better men".

Titles, at least to my mind, represented excellence, the power of original thinking, power to create. It represented wisdom gained through experience and experience comes through years of toil. They were a certificate of a rank deserved, of a standing that came from respect that was earned, of admiration that was showered from superiors, fellow workers and subordinates alike. It was to reflect the trust, a company's stakeholders had bestowed upon its bearer, to influence the trajectory of the company, not control the destiny of its people. A title was about achieving, not an achievement in itself! High titles were about truly being a better man.

Not anymore. Today, titles are empty tags. They represent an invisible ladder, each rung decorated with a price tag, a corner office, a sexy secretary et el. Today, it is about power brokering, about politicking, about 'you scratch my back, I will scratch yours', about everything that is petty, and unbecoming. Today, it has nothing to do with a sense of creation. Do you ever wonder why so many organizations are falling apart? Times are when people forget the difference between deserving and demanding. They choose to have status over stature because status can be acquired. Stature has to be built, there are no short cuts.

Back to the gladiator screenplay: I saw it over and over and over until the words rang in my mind.

Wisdom, Justice, fortitude and temperance vs. ambition and loyalty

It is perhaps, the closest, most apt metaphor to describe today's corporate world albeit in a melodramatic way. Surely, no one would disagree. The disagreement is on whether to be on the left or the right of this equation to get to the throne.

I have nothing against ambition. In drawing room discussions on this subject, almost everyone, including my wife, disagrees with me on the non-importance of a title. They point out that as in the movie, so in life-power is grabbed, not given. They remind of the ways of the wily Narsimnha Rao, my favorite politician. They tell me am confusing power with morality. In defense, I point back to the 'happy ending' of the movie. They in turn remind me the differences between reel and real life.

I truly believe that an undeserved title, far from helping you achieve greater heights can actually hinder your work, your success in an organization in terms of work that you want to accomplish. It can damage your long term prospects. Who does not want to lead from the top; have men follow orders?

Getting a title or reaching the top can, at best, be a mission. A more relevant question to ask would be: What's my vision for this company? For it's people? For the industry? For the country? Is it not the vision that separates a statesman from a politician? Desiring a title in itself cannot certainly be an end goal, can it be? Wouldn't you rather that your time at the top is remembered as an era instead of just being described as tenure? If it's the title that you crave, as did Commodus, remind yourself in time- If you cannot lead in thought, you must stand apost with other men in deed.

Having a title without a vision is like being a terrorist with an AK 47 who does not really aim, and ends up causing a lot of collateral damage. It is like rejoicing the statistics of 50 centuries by Sachin Tendulkar, without actually relishing the beauty of watching him play. Or it may be akin to checking stock scrips everyday without any intention to buy or sell. What's the point?

One last anecdote: The king of Jordan was dying of cancer in a hospital bed in the US. For years, the line of succession had been frozen- King Abdullah's younger brother was to take over the throne after him. As the dying king called for his family in the US, to bid his goodbyes one final time, his younger brother's wife, a Pakistani women and the new queen to be, could wait no longer. The king was to die any moment now so she had her husband's belongings shifted into the main office in Amman where the King held throne. As things turned out, word reached the dying king. The women in her mind had perhaps broken a mere protocol but she had lost her husband the long awaited kingdom. King Abdullah did not waste a minute and proclaimed his son to be the new king. Succession is a tricky thing; don't be in a hurry.

My advice to young men and women at this time of the year: Titles are all about desire. I ask you to aspire.

2012-12-24T20:01:00.001+05:30

The difficulty of being a good father

Picture this: You jump a traffic signal on your 2-wheeler. Nobody stops you, nobody whistles you down, and there are no cameras to have clicked your number plate for traffic violation. Nobody that matters really has seen it, except your son riding pillion, who, in his 6th year, is old to understand that perhaps something wasn't quite right, but not old enough to make the connection between breaking a simple traffic rule and the idea of morality, of fairness, and I suspect many adults will have difficulty making the connection themselves.

What would you do thereafter? I have cursed myself many times for rushing through a signal that I could see had been green for quite a while, approaching it from afar. Yet, instead of slowing down, I decided to press on at breakneck speed, actually accelerating to get through it before a glimpse of crimson was visible, comfortable in the thought that there will be a momentary pause, a middle ground, a window between the light turning red from green that conceals the intentions of the driver, diminishing the difference between a real traffic offender from one who merely misjudged the distance.

Now, there are a thousand silly things in daily life that I curse myself for -sometimes silently, sometimes aloud- small promises that I really shouldn't have broken, words that I shouldn't have uttered but I never consciously considered the effects of these small wrongs on those around me, especially my children. Until, I saw the protagonist, the main character of the movie, Ferrari Ki Sawari- a young father, with son in tow, who is an upright man & decides to pay the traffic fine voluntarily, even though no one really saw him breaking the traffic signal except his own son.

You think that the director makes a great point-nothing can be more important than demonstrating the right from wrong to your kids. But it is impossible to not go through a conflicting emotion at this point in the movie, a nagging feeling of whether one can really survive this world being that upright. Would you really pay a traffic fine voluntarily? Have you? Ever?

From then on, a barrage of questions, of matters however small have haunted me- There is a cloud, a grey area, a gap between honesty and the extent of its practice in daily life that bothers me. It is perhaps easy to teach the idea of differentiating the right from wrong to your kids. But honesty, goodness, morality are all absolute values, there is no middle ground. Their practice in daily life is anything but.

I watched my son at the playground with other kids. On his first day, he kept pleading with the other kids to slow down the merry-go- round so he could step on it, but despite his many pleas and requests, they never did. Exasperated, he decided to withdraw and play on the swing. Next day, it was the same story again and since I decided to not intervene, this kept happening for days at end, until one day, an older kid, whom my son had befriended, stepped in with a stick in hand and forced the other kids to stop. The lesson was crystal clear to my son. It wasn't clear to me. Is there value anymore in being polite or do I teach him to be aggressive like everyone else, to survive in the world we live in? More importantly, will he be able to distinguish which situation requires a stick to be used?

At school, kids are taught to always cross the road using the designated Zebra crossing- so he questioned me one day when we awkwardly leapt across the busy road at Bangalore. How must one teach a kid to cross roads using Zebra crossings when none exist? These are not insignificant things- even a child can understand the contradictions between what is being taught and what is actually being practiced. It won't be long when he learns to disregard what is taught and does what he sees others doing without understanding why there is a difference.

And here's the larger issue- our schools were so steeped in high idealism-ideas of Satyagraha and ahimsa that they never prepared us for how that idealism must be practiced in a world that is far from ideal. No teacher said that the world is imperfect so you may learn these principles but when it comes to using them, you will only be able to apply them in half measures!

When we graduated, we were like Ranbir Kapoor's character in Rocket Singh- naïve, idealistic and completely unprepared for the pitfalls of the working world, stuffing complaint boxes with letters against the corrupt, hoping the world would change for the better.

So, I often ask myself- why must I teach my kid about a rule if he is going to later learn it to become a handicap?

Must I insist that he learns about morals, if he is going to be humiliated because of those morals later on in life?

Must I teach him about the real world that is cruel and crushing or should I leave him to be disillusioned on his own later on?

Should I teach him to play or should I teach him to win?

Should I teach him to be Maryada-Purushottam or should I teach him to be Mayavi?

2012-06-28T10:32:00.001+05:30

Selling Airplanes in India

My daughter's treatment in India afforded me a lot of time to talk to people here and this is what I have learnt talking and dialing some old contacts just to see what's going on.

Just like China, there are nouveau rich (as the economy opened up) who have made their money with real estate, extractive industries etc. and Just like China they are "party" ( in politics) people. That much is known to everyone. What is not known that well, is that this money- is far more invisible in the hinterlands of India than in the cities. So a small town such as Sagar in Madhya Pradesh which is in the middle of the mining belt of India, are sitting on piles of money because it is easier to hide there. You befriend the taxman because he/she went to school with you. A town like Kolhapur has one of the highest concentration of Mercedes and BMW's.

So why would they want to know about Aviation or Airline?

Consider Tatas- before they become a respectable business house, Tata, the founder made his first millions in selling opium to the British forces who were fighting in Burma and Calcutta. Ofcourse, he had then the vision to get into textiles and steel etc. to become a formidable business group.

The thing is that if I have made my money in coal or running trucks or some such business, I may not know anything about Airlines, but the 'sexiness' of an Airline business suddenly makes me respectable, it adds profile & legitimacy to my name. I have the mullah, what I want is to gain acceptance into the big boy business club of India. That explains why there is a long queue of people asking for Airline licenses.

When Capt. Gopi made a pitch to ATR's, he didn't have 1 single slide on his business plan. He sold the "India growth story" to them. While the India growth story, is all but muddled for the moment, the ball is more in the court of Aircraft makers, as ambitious sales targets were already set based on explosive growth in the last 5 years and investments made.

Therefore, if I were an Airplane salesman selling (largely) turbo-props, I would stop thinking about the air shows with bimbettes in row to welcome some VIP's. I would rather put on my riding boots to visit the badlands of India- the so called Tier-2 cities and visit the man with the biggest house with a simple presentation titled: How to launch an Airline. None of the fancy slides on the fuel burns and payload range.

Arguably, this is a risky strategy, as by its very design it is meant to attract players that may be non-serious actors on the stage. 8/10 of such ventures may fail (not unlike elsewhere) leaving the very dirty and very tricky part of retrieving aircraft assets from these failed companies. But this is a stage that an OEM necessarily has to go through until the market matures.

Space mission to help fix land market

2012-05-04T13:46:00.000+05:30

This is a real revolution, we need a 100 more revolutions like these.

Space mission to help fix land market

Cartosat-2A, which India put into orbit last week, has begun beaming pictures of the hinterland, setting stage for what may be a revolution in country's finance

Andy Mukherjee

Arocket head being carried on the backseat of a bicycle. That’s how French photojournalist Henri Cartier-Bresson’s camera captured the initial years of India’s space programme, which began in the early 1960s.
   Many of the programmes critics noted at the time that Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was squandering the country’s severely limited budgetary resources on an elitist reverie far removed from the realities of the newly decolonized, poor nation. Author and former United Nations diplomat Shashi Tharoor described the tension in his 2003 biography of Nehru. “There was no limit to his scientific aspirations for India, Tharoor wrote in “Nehru: The Invention of India.’’ “And yet the country was moored in the bicycle age at least partly because of his unwillingness to open up its economy to the world.’’ Four decades after Nehru’s death, his economic legacy, especially a dangerous flirtation with Sovietstyle state planning, stands largely discredited.
   Yet his scientific aspirations are coming to fruition in an India that is twice as open to the world as it was just a decade ago, judging by the flow of trade and overseas investments in relation to the size of the economy. Last week, India put 10 satellites into orbit in a single mission, creating a new world record.
   Among the payloads was Cartosat-2A. It’s an indigenously developed remote-sensing satellite that has already begun beaming high-resolution pictures of the Indian hinterland, setting the stage for what may be a revolution in the nation’s finance. India has already made extensive use of domestically developed communication satellites. In the mid-1980s, satellites made it possible for India to export computer software written in Bangalore to the US. In the 1990s, the same technology enabled India to set up a modern, nationwide, electronic stock market circumventing the lack of a robust, terrestrial communication network.
   In Andhra Pradesh, students in remote villages get access to an English teacher in the city via a satellite link. Later during the day, the same link may be used to set up a video conference between an urban doctor and his rural patients. Indian scientists have also effectively used images from outer space to map the missing nutrients in barren land so it can be reclaimed for agriculture. The next step is to combine satellite pictures of landholdings with field surveys and create a unified register of property titles.
   That’s going to be a key use of the images obtained from Cartosat-2A. These will have a resolution that’s 36 times sharper than that of the images clicked by India’s first remotesensing satellite in 1988. “Land is probably the single most valuable physical asset in the country today,’’ a government-appointed committee on financialsector development noted last month. “Unfortunately, the murky state of property rights to land makes it less effective as collateral than it could be,’’ said the panel headed by University of Chicago economist Raghuram Rajan. Improving the collateral value of land will mean more bank credit to more entrepreneurs at cheaper rates. The first stumbling block to achieving this goal in India is the absence of reliable visual representations of what a landholder actually owns; surveys in India have traditionally covered farmland because the British rulers had a strong revenue interest in it. Rural and urban dwellings have largely been left out. Not just that.
   A survey in Andhra Pradesh found that 9% of village maps were either torn or faded; an additional 29% were missing from official records. “Unless alternative options — for example, use of satellite imagery — can be explored, reconstituting village maps in the 30-40% of cases where these are either missing or not usable will require huge amounts of fieldwork,’’ noted a 2007 World Bank study. “Given the cost involved, it isn’t surprising that this has rarely been done in practice.’’
   More than five years ago, McKinsey warned that India was losing as much as 1.3 percentage points of economic growth because of distortions in the land market, including titles that weren’t legally foolproof.
   One of the indirect costs shows up in very small farmers not leasing out their land to those who actually have the stomach for taking the risks associated with agriculture. If the owners of small strips of land were assured that by handing possession of their holdings to someone else they weren’t diluting their ownership rights, they would gladly do so and come to cities to supplement their rental incomes. Urbanization will accelerate; manufacturing industries will gain a competitive advantage from cheaper labour. None of this is happening now because of dodgy property rights.
   “Land title in India is uncertain and there is no assurance of clean title,’’ Ascendas India Trust, a Singapore-based owner of office property in India, told potential investors last year. “Title records provide for only presumptive title rather than a guaranteed title to the land.’’ All that may change. The Indian government is planning a mammoth resurvey of all land—partly using satellite imagery—with the ultimate objective of creating a digital repository of all land records. The spirit of private enterprise that was stymied during Nehru’s rule — and crushed under his daughter Indira Gandhi’s reign — is already witnessing a surge. And it’s getting a boost from Nehru’s insistence on inculcating a scientific temper among his countrymen. BLOOMBERG

A chore made easier

2012-05-04T13:45:00.001+05:30

A chore made easier

Housekeeping attendants at the newly opened Crowne Plaza Changi Airport hotel will not have to contend with sore backs when they clean its 320 rooms.

This is because each bed has a device that lifts the mattress to an attendant's waist level, so that she can vacuum under it without straining her back.

The device can also move the bed away from the wall, to ease the changing of beddings.

The hotel is the first here to introduce this device.

It is part of an ongoing programme by the Workforce Development Agency (WDA) to have jobs in various sectors re-designed so that older workers and housewives, among others, can be brought into the workforce.

Each device costs $500, but the WDA subsidises $400.

Another six hotels are due to install the device over the next two to three months. The WDA hopes to get 20 more hotels on board in one to two years.

Hotels here hire some 4,000 housekeeping attendants, who are paid about $1,000 a month.

Another 1,000 such workers will be needed in the next three years as more hotels are being built, the WDA said.

Empowered villages

2012-05-04T13:45:00.000+05:30

ABB brings electricity to lost villages of Rajasthan

Anshita Singhania

   THERE’S NO power today. Imagine reading this in the newspaper in the morning. You would immediately jostle up the morning’s tasks, try to use all your machines so that your work for the day isn’t delayed. Well, if this is the urban paranoia about power-cuts, imagine a situation where you had to live without electricity. There are houses in Rajasthan which have never seen electricity.
   Just as Shahrukh Khan in the movie ‘Swades’ brought electricity to a village, ABB has provided electricity to villages in Rajasthan. As part of its ‘Access to Electricity’ programme, a corporate social responsibility of the company, they have provided power to parts of Western Rajasthan through solar photovoltaic (SPV) home lighting system. Mr Biplab Majumder, country manager & MD, ABB India, says: “Around one-fourth of the world’s population don’t have access to electricity and rely on other, often primitive energy sources”. He said that the average income of a family in west Rajasthan is around Rs 45,000 annually and many families are below poverty line.
   “In the first phase (2006-07), ABB India’s ‘Access to Electricity’ programme brought power supply to around 800 households in five villages in the interior desert areas of Rajasthan, where no grid existed and was considered unviable due to the scattered nature of the villages,” he explains. The only advantage was that Rajasthan had an average of 325 days of sun. “Scattered dwellings across four hamlets were equipped with solar panel units that helped bring light to their homes. The project was continued in 2007 with another 400 homes being illuminated,” he says.
   The project, based on a publicprivate partnership model, involved the ABB, the Rajasthan government and an NGO. It was started in a hamlet with power generated by solar panels. Solar photovoltaic cells convert solar energy into electricity which is stored in a battery bank. It is through these batteries that electricity is generated. Solar voltaic pannels are also used to run household appliances like lights, fan, small TVs, radios, CD players and to charge mobile phones. As a result, the people of Hanumangarh, Balau, Lakhania Ki Dhani and Khoksar saw drastic improvement in their social, economic and environmental conditions.
   People here are mainly involved in carpet weaving, animal husbandary, carpentry, basket weaving, shoe making and tailoring. Due to lack of light, they had to complete their work before dusk. This resulted in less production and low income levels. The situation has changed now. Mr Majumdar says: “It has helped small enterprises grow. This helped increase the income and create opportunities for education and employment. There has been an increase of productive hours by 3-5 hours per day and now they can work longer in the evenings.” This has helped people take more orders and also reduced migration of people to other cities. People have also started sharing the cost of SPV. The area is visited by ABB employees regularly who check the systems and assess the overall impact of this project.
   “Another remarkable result has been the emergence of a service industry for maintenance and repairs of SPV systems. There has been a rise in the employment opportunities for the local youth,” he said.
   According to a survey conducted, the average income of people had increased from Rs 24,000 to Rs 30,000. Almost all households have a mobile phone charged with SPV systems. A few people who owned mobile phones previously had to travel around 10 km and pay Rs 10 to charge their phones. “The women can now cook at leisure as they had to finish all their work before sunset earlier,” Mr Majumder added. Health conditions of the people here have also improved as they no longer have to inhale the fumes of crudely-made kerosene lamps or strain their eyes.
   Electricity has also enabled students attend coaching classes after school hours in the evening. Earlier, the schools in the village had no proper infrastructure and most of the boys studied up to standards 10 or 12 and the girls studied up to standards 8 or 10. But now, according to data from ABB, there has been an increase in school enrolment. The academic performance of students too had improved significantly. Daily attendance has increased by 15%, says Majumder. The number of girl students has increased from around 28 in 2005-06 to 37 in 2006-07 after electricity entered their lives.
   Mr Majumder said that security at night had increased. Earlier, people never had time to socialise as they were busy working the whole day and at night they never went out. But now, they have time to attend social gatherings after the sunset. “We at ABB believe in making a difference to the communities we operate in. As a power company, we are indeed proud of this project where we bring light to many households who would otherwise have remained deprived. It is also making a big difference to their lives from a social and economic perspective,” says Biplab Majumder, country manager & managing director, ABB India.

2012-03-27T18:34:00.001+05:30

The art of driving on Indian roads

Roads are our national heritage, as you very well know. This is a cradle to grave association: many of us are born here, live here (Hindi movies have a full genre of songs associated with the 'footpath') and of course, given our highest regards for safety, dying on the road is as natural as dying of old age. In between, we marry here (by digging holes into the road for the 'tamboo' to be erected), we wash our laundry on the road, we sell stuff from chips to computers on the road, we pray on the road and do so much more. Such productive use of a public asset is unparalleled around the world. Naturally, then World bank is always so eager to lend us money for building more roads.

But ofcourse, we also drive on them. For those of us, who may, in our naiveté, forgotten about the talent that this requires, I wanted to summarize some nuggets of wisdom that I have acquired while doing so. It must be said that driving on Indian roads is an existential skill, quite literally so and many expats have unhesitatingly mentioned it on their resumes after their India posting, as the single most important skill that they learned in India. It must also be mentioned that NASA has unequivocally expressed its preference to hire Indian auto drivers for driving the next MARS probe vehicle when humans finally visit MARS. They believe a great deal of affinity exists that can be tapped to the benefit of human kind.

With further ado, here are some of the secrets that Indians inherently know (cradle to grave association) but for the benefit of the rest of the world:

Showing who the boss on the roads is: Well first things first. You may not be to able to do so at home, but once you leave home, it is time to show the world who the boss is- everything you do, whether it is the flourish with which you open and close the doors, the dirty look you give to the rider behind you from your rear view mirror, or the pitch and length of your horn- it is all to achieve that one single goal- no one on the roads must take you for granted.

So let us say, if the signal has turned green and the guy infront of you is still not moving (because the car infront of him hasn't moved), it is your public duty to encourage him to do so, by trying to sit atop your horn, so he can derive uninterrupted motivation to move forward. The key word here is uninterrupted; lest the bugger think you have relented and start to take it easy. In case you get tired, because this could take some time, you can always ask your travelling companion or a passerby to press your horn for you. After all, don't the geese do the same thing while flying in formation. It is such a natural thing to do, it should come naturally.

Take the lights- Let us say you encounter another vehicle coming from the opposite side on a 15 ft. wide road what would a king of the road do? Exactly, you would flash your lights to assert your right to go first. It does not even matter if the road is 15 feet or 50 feet, or even has a divider with separate lanes for to and fro traffic. All that matters is that you know that there is a feature in the car that allows you to flash the head lights at day time and the other idiot should know that you know how to use it and that you will not shy away from exercising this right, come hail or high wind. What if the other guy also flashes his lights. Ah, there's the rub- Our mythology provides clues to how you must act then. IF you have seen the TV Serials Ramayana or Mahabharata, the warriors pray & invoke lightening like weapons and throw them at each other. Then these weapons- flashes of light really, fly and clash with each other and eventually one or both are destroyed. And then, both warriors throw each other incredible looks. You must emulate mythology and then just like in the serials, flash your light once again with even more vengeance.

Likewise, by keeping your lights at full beam at night, you are just retaking your natural space around you and telling the other guy, who is blind by now, that his place is in the gutter at the side of the road.

The right of way: There is a caveat to all of the above. Whatever else you may do, in this battle of dharma on the Indian roads you never take on the dreaded GOI vehicles- ie, the Government of India vehicles. Government buses are mai-baap. If you do so, all that may happen is that they may ram through vehicle, pinch their nose, shrug their shoulders and walk away.

Horn please: Since most of our great nations great people are stuck on our great roads at any given time, before & after working hours, you can imagine there is no time left for practicing any 'regular' pastimes. Indian ingenuity (assorted management theorists now call it Jugaad- the art of improvisation), that we are so proud of, is seen in abundance here. Using the horn, irrespective of how feeble it may be on a puny Luna, is a national pastime. The ruling congress party was toying with the idea of proposing legislation around it so it is permanently enshrined in our constitution as a fundamental right, but were not so sure of getting it through the house due to the 'didi's menace. But that does not matter. Something does not have to be in the constitution to be practiced. So, right to using the horn- look some people believe that their vehicle is underutilized if all features of their car, especially the horn is not used enough. No horn means no existence in the parlance of Indian roads. If, you may have momentary lapse of memory, you can always look at the smoke-belching truck infront of you, which has a devil's head painted on it with an all familiar suggestion: Horn Please.

Speed breakers Speed breakers are ornamental creations on Indian roads, meant to create a beautiful undulating landscapes that is soothing to the eye. It has nothing to do with breaking speed actually. You simply cross don't cross the breaker. You swerve to the side of the road where the breaker ends and then swerve back onto the road.

Lane discipline: Well, first you have to find a lane, but assuming that you are Agent Vinod ( James Bond equivalent in India) and you manage to find one, the way it works is that the lane dividing dotted line must be exactly between your 2 front tires, if you are on a four wheeler. You don't exactly ride 'in' a lane. You drive 'on or rather 'across' it. A two-wheeler rider has the option of zig-zagging between one lane to another. This option is especially well-utilized if you have PYT sitting as a pillion rider. Expect the slowest vehicle to be in the fastest lane. That is because the left most lane is for even slower vehicles that are stationary.

Helmets: There is a rule that helmets must be worn even though there is no chance in an eternity that you will ever cross the lightening speed of 33kms per hour in any city, anywhere in India. If you had an uncle or any distant relative working in the armed forces in the 70's, you can perhaps make a fashion statement on the streets of Bangalore by asking him to lend you his bottle green army helmet (the kind Irfaan khan is seen sporting in Paan Singh Tomar). Mind you, it is solid steel, so much so that you may feel dizzy with the weight. Strapping it on is not important because the traffic is not that fast, unless you are foolish enough to land in a pothole that may unbalance the precariously balanced but tough, fashionable looking thing on your head. If the helmet has scratches and peeled off paint, or a dent (presumably from a bullet that was shot at by the invading Chinese forces in 1962) boy aren't you then going to rule the cool quotient. It is the equivalent of wearing a bullet shot or acid-wash torn jeans.

Tail lights: India is such a fascinating place- Even truck drivers take public service messages seriously- In order to save electricity, they simply don't install tail lights.

Swerving: Before I tell you about this, ask where was swing bowling discovered. Where indeed- in the Subcontinent! Swerving on the road is like swing bowling and I suspect the motivation to invent swing bowling came from our roads. It is a delicate art- Open manhole- swerve, cow on the road- swerve, stationary vehicle-swerve, pothole- swerve … you get the idea.. Why should life's journeys be a straight line?

Swearing & gesturing and Spitting: – All the roads are my spittoon and I will swear as I please. That says it all.

At the traffic signal: You never really stop. The trick is keep moving ahead, keep revving your engine. The smart accountants on the 2-wheelers who pass by every day, have already figured out the duration of traffic signals, They have a premonition, somewhat through a sixth sense, micro-seconds before the signal for the opposite flow of traffic must turn to red, which automatically means that the traffic for their own lane must turn green.

Crossing the busy road: Ever swum across a river in spate? You don't take on the rival, you go with the flow- you move forward inch by inch diagonally in the direction of the traffic flow, until you have established yourself as a nuisance blocking the road .Then people have to stop to let you go.

Ambassador: This one has a bit of retro-appeal therefore I see a need to mention it. Assume you are driving a small Taxi like a Maruti 800, but you come upon a large family customer. Typical to the Indian customs, you don't refuse a customer. Instead you sit on your side, against the door. Then as and when you need to change floor gear, you just asked the kids to 'swalpa adjust maadi'.

Queuing: Look, if you can master this, I can guarantee you half the battle is won. It's like the golf swing. This skill is utilized almost everywhere, but I have specified 2 maneuvers at the railway crossing where, if used deftly, it is like a trump card.

Part A: At the railway signal crossing: Ah, now this is the one that requires experience and precision so pay attention. You arrive at a railway level crossing that is closed in anticipation of an arriving train. Well, if you are on a 2 wheeler, you immediately get down, bend your torso 90% and simply go under bar with your bike, plain and simple as that. The bar is to keep out other fools who chose to flaunt their wealth and travel in 4-wheelers. Right, that being clarified, let's talk about what happens if you find yourself in a 4-wheeler. Part of the skill is to spot the queue at the railway crossing from afar. Let's say, there are about 10 vehicles piled up in the queue on each side of the crossing. An ordinary mortal may simply decide to be at the 11^th position. Not you. You have read my article. You have mastered this right from your days of yore. You rev-up your engine, tweak your moustaches a bit, ignore all the dirty looks and simply zoom past all the other 9 to arrive at parallel to the second position. Notice that I say second position. That is so, because the guy first in the lane has parked it about 1.5 cms away from the bar, so to aim for the first position would really be fool-hardy, second position is good enough. You don't have the second position just YET. You have to perform a small, but deft maneuver to get it. Right, so just as you arrive parallel to the second car, you turn your steering left a little, say about 15-30 degrees, so that your vehicle's left edge is now strategically placed in-between first and the second position. At this point, you haven't quite evicted the guy in the second position, but you have, very literally, what is called 'a foot in the door'. Don't lose concentration just yet. As the guy in the erstwhile second position curses himself for parking too far apart from the rear end of the first car (about 5 inches apart, anything more than 2 inches leaves you vulnerable for a 'hostile takeover'), you grab every single opportunity that you get between now and when the train finally arrives and leaves, to inch ahead to ensure that, if at all your rival moves, he is going to bump into you. And of course, that is going to be hitting the minefield as you know how to act if someone even brushes a feather across the length and breadth of your vehicle. If that ever happens, you know, you have to come out of the vehicle and shout at the top of your voice, pick a fight and make sure that everyone behind you in the queue must suffer for their bad karma. But believe me, it is unlikely to happen. The guy will simply make way for you. (though it helps if you have a stubble & wearing a pyjama-kurta with paan stains. Some people have tried using stickers of Samajwadi party, even here in Bangalore on their vehicles and found it very effective).

Part B: Right, its time for the manually operated crossing bars to go up. You are alert and raring to go. You have noticed that some fools have followed your example queuing up behind you, contesting for the third, fourth, fifth or subsequent positions in the queue, so effectively there is a parallel second queue albeit with a slight curve because they all have their vehicles lined at that 15 degrees angle I mentioned before. And this is also obviously the case on the other side of the railway line. You curse them for being in-disciplined copy-cats. But so what?.. You still have the reassurance of being at the number second position…er.. that is.. number second position on this side of the railway crossing, being mindful of the mirror image arrangement on the other side.

As soon as the bars lift up high enough- This is no less than a 100 meter sprint with a billion people as competition- that your low rise vehicle can pass (the other fool has a high chassis car, so he has to wait longer, you once again congratulate yourself for tactical superiority). Remember the angling of the vehicle is everything, other than the timing. You don't drive straight, you drive at about 30 degrees and assuming that the wall of vehicles that you have on the other side do the same, you are sure to have beaten the queue.

2012-03-18T18:25:00.001+05:30

Vindicated

Sometimes when you write something and you can see a living proof of it being played right infront of your eyes, you feel so vindicated.

In May 2011, I had written about why all roles matter, not just to pay lip service to teamwork, but in the very real sense. For instance that of a bell boy in a hotel.

http://www.garyagarwal.blogspot.in/2011/05/unusual-hiring-luxurious-office-of.html

On a recent trip, I stayed with an ITC hotel and was naturally curious to find the whereabouts of the management with whom I previously worked. I asked the young person at the Check in desk at the towers, about Gautam Anand, who led the team many years back, but she shook her head and seems to not even show recognition of the name.

Just then, a bell boy who was walking past must have overheard me, turned back to come to me and without hesitation said that Mr. Anand was located at this property till 2003 and has since moved to Chennai.

Bell Boys remain at the properties for many long years, serving faithfully. Check-in staff moves on. Who would you think will know the hotel & its people better?

2012-01-25T20:14:00.001+05:30

The Surge into Africa

The world does not wait, while you are sitting in the potty ("going through crap") and the rule applies perhaps more vigorously to our Industry than the rest. The Aviation Industry is in a perpetual hurry.

So, with this master piece of an acquisition- Etihad's 40% buy into Air Seychelles, a classic inorganic growth strategy fit for a latecomer to the market vs. someone like Emirates that has painstakingly built an organic business since 1986-7 (over 20 years) to reach where they are, is also the beginning of the surge into near virgin Africa.

This also comes at a time, when Emirates is increasingly facing more resistance to roll out their organic growth program- from countries like Canada, Germany, Australia and even India (no A380's allowed so far).

And if you have noticed where Seychelles is located and how many bilaterals they hold, it could also mean the end of the infantile, fragile & nascent, dream of several African and Indian/ Asian carriers to connect Asia to Africa.

Because this would mean that India & large parts of Eastern & Southern Africa could be connected using a narrow body with a good range.

Time will tell.

2012-01-10T18:06:00.001+05:30

A peep into Vietnam's Doi Moi Era

A memoir of life in Saigon during the late eighties

The fall of the Berlin wall, as the 5 decades old cold war came to an end, changed things all over the world. Whether it was Europe, Africa or Asia, no country had remained unaffected by the cold war, so naturally, its demise too, brought about tremendous changes. Vietnam was, very unfortunately so for its people, one such country, at the frontiers of the cold war and a theatre of some of the worst conflicts that played out during the era. So when Gorbachev announced his Glasnost and Perestroika, Vietnam, torn apart by years of conflict, saw light at the end of the tunnel and announced its own- Doi Moi, the rhyming, somewhat musical sounding version of the liberal face of communism. The year was 1986.

In December of 1986, my father accepted a United Nations assignment based at Saigon (Now Ho Chi Minh city) and that is how in May, 1987, I found myself, along with my brother, both teenagers, landing at Saigon's Tân Sơn Nhất International Airport. Today, an airport bursting at seams, Saigon was then, so poorly connected, it is unimaginable that the only reasonable way in was a once a week Air France flight on a 747-Combi that left Paris to arrive at Saigon after multiple hops, via Karachi, Delhi and Bangkok enroute. France had sought to maintain colonial connections despite the conflict.

As the plane touched down and taxied towards the terminal, it crossed rows of American war plane skeletons, as if lined up to showcase trophies of a war won against world's formidable power.

No sooner had we come out of the Airport and boarded the taxi, than my father started to narrate the queerness of a communist state- someone, a total stranger, had come up to him while he was waiting to receive us, and extended his congratulations for finally being reunited with his family. My father was taken by surprise and before he could ask, the stranger smiled and walked away. At social get-togethers ,We were to come across many such strange episodes later- A colleague of my father, while shopping at Dong Khoi, a posh Saigon thoroughfare, was addressed by his name and given advice on how to buy the best pearls- yet again, by a total stranger. There was never any doubt in the mind of a foreigner living in the Saigon of the late eighties, that he was being watched. Papers from my father's office desk would disappear, copied for government scrutiny and would then magically reappear. Chauffeurs, maids, guards, anyone who came in contact with the foreigners, were queried on a pre-designated time and day to obtain information on the whereabouts and movements of aliens on a strict, weekly basis. Going out of the city's 25 kilometers periphery required permission from the government. The government was pedantic almost hysterical about foreigners and nor were they in this game alone. Once, another friend of my father, who worked in the rural hinterlands of the Mekong delta, was approached by an unknown man in a party. The man knew that my father's friend had a daughter studying in the US and her exact whereabouts. He made a not so subtle suggestion that any clues to the missing American service men, especially from the rural Mekong delta area, where my father's friend farm was, would be handsomely rewarded. The Cyclo's lined up infront of our hotel- Cuu Long (Now Majestic), a 1925 built, French colonial era property at the end of Dong Khoi street, a hub for foreigners staying in the city and our home for the first 6 months of our stay, were always on the cue- with each cyclo assigned to a specific foreigner to keep tab on what places in the city were visited.

To a teenager's mind, even though, its backdrop hardly understood, this was 007-spy stuff, with imagination running wild- the whole of Saigon city was a large movie set, with the script of a Bond flick running live and we as characters in it. It couldn't have helped we visited Saigon during school holidays and that the supply of cold war depicting Bond movies (with Roger Moore taking train journeys between Eastern European Countries like Hungary to Vienna, Austria's capital and a major hotspot of cold war era's diplomacy), was unlimited, as was the Rambo series.

To my surprise then, once we finally moved into our own apartment, a former Jailhouse, perhaps earlier used for torturous interrogations & therefore considered well protected with high walls and barbed wires, was full of people from Eastern European countries- there was a couple from Hungary, a bachelor from East Germany and another couple from Poland. The neighboring apartment building had Russian families by the dozen. Vietnam's geo-politics at the time, its history of war with the colonial powers of the Second World War, drove it to be foes with the US & the Western allies, while being friends with countries of the Eastern Bloc- Hungary, Poland, East Germany & Russia. And India. Some reasons for India's involvement could have been historic- such as the presence of Buddhism in Indo-China and a large Tamil Diaspora during the British times, but India, led by Indira Gandhi and completely entangled into the cold era politics, sought to befriend a nation that was a sworn enemy of China. To showcase this, IRCON-the Indian Railway Construction Company had built parts of the Saigon to Hanoi railway line with Indian locomotives and rolling stock providing the weekly train service between the 2 cities that took 4 days to traverse the 1800 kilometers, if the engine didn't break down. There was also an animal husbandry project based in the fertile Mekong delta to rear milk yielding buffaloes that could help diversify Vietnam's agri-based economy. The Vietnamese loved us- we were a curiosity wherever we ventured, with loud cries of "Ando, Ando" (for Indian) following us. Once, an acquaintance pointed us to another Indian connection- the house of the infamous crook-Charles Shobraj (He had an Indian father while his mother was from Saigon). Shobraj is still alive, serving a jail sentence in Kathmandu. There were other influences- right next to the Ben Than market, then a place to buy everything counterfeit, now a popular place for the tourists, was an old Dravidian style temple, complete with an old Tamil Pujari, who spoke very little Tamil and didn't know when the temple was built. Now married to a Vietnamese woman, he had arrived as a little boy with his father on a ship during the Second World War.

Saigonese loved Americans too- but given the political compulsions, and the dictates from their Northern Hanoi based brethren, had to do so more discretely. To this day, there isn't much love lost between the power drunk Northerners and the commerce oriented Saigonese. Many secretly aspired to escape to the US someday. With over a million people of Vietnamese origin, living mainly in the West Coast cities of the US, many adopted during the war, while they were still infants, it was impossible to not have a relationship. As the effects of Doi Moi took hold, money from the non-resident Vietnamese started to flow in as investment. The Dong though continued to weaken, as the government dealt with high inflation. My mother would have to stuff currency notes in a gunny bag to go buy a week's grocery.

Friday evenings were a spectacle in the streets of Saigon- The adult went to the old R & R haunt of the American servicemen- The Rex Hotel with its famous dance bar. The kids could view the athletic spectacle of a cock fight in the high court square or enjoy a spectacular Vietnamese game of Da-Cao played like volleyball except with a shuttle kicked by lithesome, bare top, Vietnamese men. Women were no less beautiful in their long, black, straight hair, falling on their flowing elegant Ao-dai's, a long dress much like Salwaar-kurta's. The street had it all, but the sight that one beholds in the memory forever is the Notre Dame church at the end of the street- it was magical to be there during New Year eves.

The young Vietnamese, banned from going outside the city limits, leave alone going out of the country, were too restless to stay indoors. So, they got on their 100 cc Hondas, with their significant others on the back and did a 100 rounds of the city's main streets- so if you were sitting in one of Dong Khoi's several French style open cafés, having your extra bitter Vietnamese coffee with condensed milk at the bottom (my favorite, though, was ice cream served in a real coconut shell), you were sure to spot the same couple go past exactly every 5 minutes. It was hilarious but also sad. Vietnamese government, at the time, required its citizens to obtain a license to simply get married. There were other peculiarities of communist Vietnam- The door to commerce was still somewhat shut- so some things were always in short supply- cigarettes for example. Gifts of cigarette cartons were common place to garner a favor but if you really wanted something done, and make them do so happily, it had to be a full carton of 555 cigarettes- yes, the only word to understand this phenomenon was that the Vietnamese seemed to have a fetish for it. Dunhill was fine too, but if you presented 555, boy, then, it was either of the too- you were in an exceptionally generous mood or it was really the moon that you would ask for. Usually the latter.

There were other distractions for the foreigners- visits to Tanah Binh club for swimming, weekend trips to Un-Tao beach, where it wasn't uncommon to be presented with an entire turtle, complete with its shell, placed on top of a large tray, with all its' garnishes and served with a festive flourish, as lunch. My mother, a staunch vegetarian and unable to withstand the stench of the seafood(or aroma) depending on your preferences, was usually nauseated during lavish office parties where seafood was in abundance and at least once, I remember, almost fainted, with orange juice and some fresh air put to good use to revive her. A tourist trip to the Cu-Chi mines, 300 kilometers long tunnels by some accounts and bored manually by the Vietnamese to fight the Guerilla war against the Americans, or the long but beautiful 8 hour country drive to the French hill station of Dalat and a stay in one of its charming but haunted resorts. Apparently, a French army general would check in very often, only to disappear the next morning, and even his signatures on the register would disappear, as narrated to us by the hotel staff. It was a smart way to keep in business in an era with few tourists arriving.

We left in 1989, but as the new decade of the 90's arrived, Vietnam was to graduate from the Doi Moi Era and embrace full liberalization post the fall of the Berlin wall. Saigon, am told is now indistinguishable from any another bustling South East Asian Metropolis. The unparalleled view of the majestic bend in the Saigon River, the colorful street decorations and fireworks to celebrate Tet- Vietnamese New Year, the aroma of the Vietnamese coffee…. all of these are perhaps still very much there but I never could go back, so luckily these two and a half decades old images of the Doi-Moi Era are frozen in time as frames of a black and white movie playing in my mind.

2012-01-06T14:16:00.001+05:30

A review of a review

A comment on Mihir Sharma's review of Suhel Seth's book- 'Get to the top'

There is an old Panchatantra classic that I have read to my toddler several times:

An old Brahmin performs a puja (a prayer) for a king and gets a cow's calf as dakshina (alms). As the night falls, The Brahmin proceeds to carry it home on his shoulders. The path to his home passes through a forest. 5 thieves spot him coming from afar and decide to employ an unusual plan to grab the calf. As soon as the Brahmin enters the forest, the first thief, dressed as a common villager, presents himself and in mock surprise, asks the Brahmin:

First Thief - Why for god's sake are you carrying a pig on your shoulders?

Brahmin (lets out a cry) - You are mistaken oh kind man, it is a calf!

No sooner has the Brahmin traversed another 100 meters, the second thief confronts the Brahmin and says:

Second Thief- Where do you, a Brahmin, of all the people, go with a pig on your shoulders?

Brahmin (now angry) - Are you totally blind? Can you not see it is a calf?

This continues with the third and the fourth and even the fifth thief repeating the same question to the Brahmin throughout the forest, until the Brahmin , mired in self doubt, and troubled with the thought how his calf could have changed into a pig, finally decides to abandon the calf in the jungle and continues his journey home without it. The thieves of course pick the calf up and celebrate.

There is moral to the story, just as every Panchatantra tale has one, but certainly some people got it wrong- they thought the story told them how, if a lie was told enough times, it could magically turn into a truth or at least a half truth; if enough mud was thrown, some would definitely stick. And voila, the first practitioners of the PR industry were born.

Seth's influence or stranglehold, should I say, on the Indian media is such that at first I wasn't even going to read Mihir Sharma's (a writer at Caravan magazine) review of his book. In this age of crass commerce, when even seasoned authors resort to cheap gimmickry, can you really be faulted for becoming prejudiced? But should I say, of all book reviews that get published, very rarely are there any that come even close to offering such profound insights- not so much on Seth's book or on him personally though he is chosen as a medium, a symbol- but on the death of merit, on shallowness, even irrevalance of TV debates, on ubiquitous armchair subject experts enshrined by public appearances on TV, on the blindness of ambition.

Seth doesn't get this, judging from his twitter reactions to the review. No surprises there- people in love with themselves usually don't.

So, the book is of course not worth a dime, but the review- Mihir Sharma's review that is, all of India's gold can't get you what it can, if you were looking to understand the psyche of today's upwardly mobile India.

There is just one drawback- you have to have watched Seth in 'action' on NDTV or you won't understand "….Intemperance is intellect and fervidity is profundity in the India of today…"

A poor alternative, if you are not an NDTV audience, could be to have a colleague or a boss who comes from a similar background as Seth's but a clearer, more distinctive identifier of such a person would be his proclamations of "passion" towards his work more than 2-3 times in the same sentence when asked to explain something of intellect. If you mistook him to be a salesman for a condom brand called, well, Passion, by god, you are, in the esteemed company of a person whom Sharma's refers to as belonging to the 'age of Seth'. Judging from the thousands of MBA graduates that India is churning out at breakneck speed, all instilled with the sense that they are the next Jack Welch, finding such people shouldn't be too difficult either. Just visit the gali next to my house at Bangalore, (infact, any bylane in India) and you will come across the esteemed Sri-Devi (global) MBA Institute where such specimens are groomed. And why not? As the 'Suhelian era', dawns & every man an advertisement for himself, humility, far from being virtuous, is a terrible drawback in your personality, that must require you to see a career counselor or indeed a psychiatrist, if you have to reach anywhere.

Consider the following delights of Sharma's essay:

………..It doesn't matter, he (Seth) argues, if you are a blithering idiot when asked for your opinion: "It is not important what your opinion is. What is important is that you do not come across as someone who has nothing to say." Seth, the master people-brander, does not address the peril of having an opinion and expressing it vociferously, and yet still coming across as someone who has nothing to say. The possibility appears to never have occurred to him….

It reminds me of myriad competitive college entrance exams Group Discussions that were to judge your intellect merely from your ability to interject & aggressively elbow into the 15 minute discussion attended by a dozen contestants, where each of the other 11 were as eager to showcase their verbal prowess as our politicians are. No matter than many of our youngsters believe that stopping to breathe while talking may be a competitive disadvantage, a dangerous gap that could lead to the demise of a promising career. It is an ode to the age of commerce then that an entire empire has been built in teaching people how to remember to breathe.

Or of colleagues in large office meetings, who offer an opinion with no more conviction than as a statement of existence.

Sharma's 4000 words essay, then, is a master piece- if the details on Seth's journey to the top, do sometimes get a trifle tedious, they are only there to explain larger points about malice's in our society. Go on and read it now, I exhort you- because this is a good time of the year to get some perspective.

Mihir Sharma's review available on this link:

http://www.caravanmagazine.in/Story.aspx?StoryID=1189&Page=1

2011-12-29T17:36:00.001+05:30

Playing all sides

How some domestic Airlines have used their dominant presence at an important Gateway Airport to align across the board. And why must it make sense

An incredible number of International Airlines (more than a dozen), all over the world, chose to join one of the 3 large alliance groups (Star, One world and Skyteam) over the last 2-3 years. Analysts differ in exactly what has precipitated this sudden change, in a kind of second wave (the first wave was when mega carriers formed alliances) of relatively smaller carriers rushing to join a global alliance- some may have used the opportunity available due to the loosening of the anti-trust laws but most were motivated by the imminent threat from the Middle East and the desire to protect their businesses in the face of this onslaught.

However, there is also another distinct pattern emerging, either as a reaction to increased grouping of carriers or just driven by individual business model of the carrier in question. More than one carrier now uses it or a variation of it as a calculated response, an anti-strategy, to further their business interests.

Let us start with the Americas. Take Jetblue. Based out of JFK, it made a conscious decision to depart from the establish stand alone 'LCC with a good product model' to code share with International carriers. Towards this end, it underwent, what some would regard as considerable risk of changing its existing Navitaire passenger reservation system to Sabre that allowed greater flexibility in code-sharing. Let's look at the list of International carriers that it code shares with: Lufthansa, Emirates, South African Airways, El AL, TAM & LAN. I understand they are also pretty close to signing a code share deal with Jet Airways, India. So there is no selection of carriers from any particular global Alliance. Why would it make sense for Jetblue to do so? The answer perhaps lies in Jetblue's location: It has the largest presence at the JFK Airport. JFK still is the largest gateway Airport for many non-US Airlines irrespective of the Alliance they may be part of and serves a very important catchment area that cannot be effectively served from Newark. So despite, Continental's dominant presence in Newark and it being a member of Star Alliance, a presence is required at JFK. While Jetblue's bread and butter is in US domestic operations, it does not hurt to get International feed onto the domestic network, if it comes as a by-product of being in the dominant carrier position in the most important gateway Airport of the country. Therefore it makes perfect sense to accept feed from whichever International source it comes from, without having to chose one alliance over the other and restrict your options.

West Jet, the second largest carrier in Canada after Air Canada, does the same- using its presence at Toronto, it code shares with the likes of Emirates, KLM, Cathay and American, as it prepares to enter even more code shares.

Take GOL, the Brazilian carrier based out of Sao Paulo. Exactly the same story with the only difference being, TAM, is the dominant carrier. But it is part of Star Alliance. Sao Paulo is the most important gateway Airport for International traffic into South America. GOL realizes that in absence of any other alternate carrier, which forms part of the other alliances such as Sky team or one –world, it can use its sizable although not dominant presence, at the Sao Paulo Airport to collect/distribute International feed. GOL therefore code shares with Delta, KLM and a number of other European carriers.

Elsewhere in the world, there are more examples- Virgin Australia, primarily an Australian domestic carrier based out of Melbourne, has recently announced its code share and partnership with Singapore Airline, a Star Alliance member to serve Asia, while in a code share agreement with Delta, a Sky team member to serve the US market. Its chief competitor Qantas is of course a one-world member.

So the jist of the matter is this: If a carriers' primary business is domestic in a vast country like US, Canada, Brazil, Australia etc., but it happens to have a large presence at an important gateway Airport city that has a lot of international traffic, it does no harm to accept high yield code share traffic from International carriers. Additionally, at least 2 of the carriers mentioned above already had a hybrid model, with a better in flight product, & fewer seats than a typical LCC has. This helps in aligning passengers traveling on the full service international leg with the domestic product.

So, the question is, which carrier/s in India or China, other than those that are already part of a major alliance or planning to become one soon, could take this route and use it as a strategy? I know one carrier, but I am not going to name it.