WORLD: ENERGY CRISIS AND WHY EVEN WE COULD BE WRONG :-)

The lethargy to move to alternative fuel seems almost insane...

The reality is that many underdeveloped and developing nations have similar sources of alternative energy; yet, fail to see the potential. If most of the major metropolitan cities turn to CNG as the standard fuel for all public transport systems and private vehicles, it would reduce the oil demand significantly. While billions of dollars are being spent in most nations for construction of highways, a fraction of similar investments for the creation of mass rapid railroad transport system running on gas (not gasoline, but hydrogen based gas) would not just drastically reduce the need for fuel oil, but would also help in creating a cleaner environment.

Reports state that India’s natural gas production is slated to touch nearly 170 million standard cubic metres per day by 2011-12. So, when natural gas and CBM can run power plants and vehicles, when an Iran or Russia based pipeline can meet the rest of the demand, why is such a price rise paranoia?

As the oil reserves near depletion in Middle East, the price of the same can only go up. A war between Israel and Iran might never happen but the fear factor of the same would continue to push the price northward. It’s time to exit this game theory of US (who perhaps benefit the most as the more the price of oil rises, more becomes the demand of dollar to buy the same). Let’s hope that the day gas becomes the preferred fuel is not far. And what would be proof of that? That’s easy. That would be the day an exemplary American President bombs a state called Bihar in India and claims he did it for saving the world from weapons of ‘gas’ destruction.


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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.

An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
 

Zee Business Best B-School Survey 2012
Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri's Session at IMA Indore
IIPM IN FINANCIAL TIMES, UK. FEATURE OF THE WEEK
IIPM strong hold on Placement : 10000 Students Placed in last 5 year
IIPM's Management Consulting Arm-Planman Consulting
Professor Arindam Chaudhuri - A Man For The Society....
IIPM: Indian Institute of Planning and Management
IIPM makes business education truly global
Management Guru Arindam Chaudhuri
Rajita Chaudhuri-The New Age Woman
IIPM B-School Facebook Page
IIPM Global Exposure
IIPM Best B School India
IIPM B-School Detail
IIPM Links

IIPM : The B-School with a Human Face

India’s Upcoming B-Schools

A list of the B-Schools that Nearly made it to The Top 30 Ranks in the B&E-ICMR B-School Survey. And well, They Might just Make it Next Year!

B-schools of today can ill afford to stick to age old theories and management practices. In this dynamic business world, they have to continuously imbibe the changing trends and embrace the emerging buzzwords like sustainability, ethics, environment and entrepreneurship. And with an ever growing number of competitors, they cannot avoid the marketing aspect as well, since they have to be able to make their target audience aware of their courses and opportunities available post education. While in the west, b-school rankings keep changing almost every year, with even institutions like Harvard Business School not coming in the top ranks because of competition, in India, the situation has been quite different till now, with legacy rankings continuing for ages and the same b-schools coming in at the same ranks more or less. To that extent, the B&E ICMR B-School Survey has pointedly ensured that such legacy issues are avoided – and positively so, this year, while the usual suspects did make it to the top thirty, here’s a list of those b-schools which just about escaped from being included in the main list. There is no taking away credit from them, as India needs more and more b-schools to reject legacy rankings and to be the new change. Here they are:

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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.

An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
 

Zee Business Best B-School Survey 2012
Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri's Session at IMA Indore
IIPM IN FINANCIAL TIMES, UK. FEATURE OF THE WEEK
IIPM strong hold on Placement : 10000 Students Placed in last 5 year
IIPM's Management Consulting Arm-Planman Consulting
Professor Arindam Chaudhuri - A Man For The Society....
IIPM: Indian Institute of Planning and Management
IIPM makes business education truly global
Management Guru Arindam Chaudhuri
Rajita Chaudhuri-The New Age Woman
IIPM B-School Facebook Page
IIPM Global Exposure
IIPM Best B School India
IIPM B-School Detail
IIPM Links

IIPM : The B-School with a Human Face

HEWLETT-PACKARD: NEW CEO

The New CEO is a Software guy and has Prior Experience only in Enterprise Sales – A clear mismatch with the current philosophy of HP – The largest IT company in the World. Is he the right choice? 

From ethics to business. While at SAP, Apotheker helped build a global software enterprise sales unit. B2B was his frontier. He headed various divisions and revived SAP’s R&D platform, and kicked-off a glorious run of 18 quarters of double-digit software revenue growth, which ended in 2009. The agony for the hopefuls is that, at HP, none of these credentials will play the cushion. He is not known to be a people’s man – a fact which will not help inspire HP’s 30,000 employees, who have not been in the best of spirits under Hurd’s reign. To prove this, as per Thomson Reuters, HP’s revenue and net profits per employee for FY2009 stood at $406,335 (97.11% less than that the industry’s) and $28,405 (93.08% less than the industry’s) respectively. Says Sturm of EMA, “The immediate challenge facing Apotheker relates to employees. It is imperative that he takes immediate steps to improve employee morale & control key employee turnover. If he cannot do these, then his tenure with HP will be brief.” While HP is known for its hardware, distribution and B2C business, software is more of loose change (accounting for 2.8% of HP’s topline for Q2, 2010). And this is precisely what Apotheker has set out to repair. Expectedly, under him, HP’s focus on software will increase manifold. But with software, comes innovation. And Apotheker’s SAP files prove him a failure at it. Also, he has earned a reputation for establishing an environment at SAP, which focusses on high-cost and low return maintenance and support pricing, rather than profitable applications, despite the billions spent on innovation. The fact that he has also presided over product delays and has demonstrated ill-sense of pricing techniques (he angered SAP’s customers by increasing prices during the slowdown), also does not ensure better days ahead for the mass-pleasing HP; the foreboding danger being a repetition of what happened to SAP – HP might soon find competitors chiseling away its PC market share, a process which has already started. (HP’s global share during Q3, FY2010, stood at 17.5% vis-a-vis 19.3% in FY2009).

So what should Apotheker do? He has options. The most irresistible one will be not to tamper with HP’s pride – its hardware business – which he will, despite knowing that Hurd tried to give HP a software and enterprise business edge with its acquisitions of EDS, 3Com and Palm. But neither did the $13.9 billion EDS acquisition help HP make waves in the consulting & services business (where IBM is #1), nor did the $2.7 billion 3Com buy manage a dent in the network arena where Cisco rules. And as for the $1.2 billion Palm buy, everyone knows what an HP smartphone looks like (!).

Many claim that Apotheker might do to HP what Sam Palmisano did to IBM. But the truth is – the very imagination lacks logic. HP is not IBM. When IBM chose to go the software way, it was being sucked into a black hole, with its hardware business collapsing. It was then that IBM decided to shed the deadweight of its hardware unit. HP is in not in a similar situation by lightyears! It is the #1 IT company in the world (having made $114.55 billion in revenues in FY2009) and sells the largest numbers of PCs and printers in the world (claiming 37% of global market share in the printer segment as of Q3, 2010). What makes Apotheker believe that HP needs a makeover?

Whether he will take a dig on cloud computing is a wonder (as he has had his share of expensive failures in this regard while at SAP, burning $5 billion in two years), but what is inevitable, is that HP under Apotheker will join the battle to capture the enterprise space from the likes of Oracle and IBM. This would call for expensive acquisitions of players like SAP, Salesforce.com, et al, which will put big question marks on the ROI figure of HP, that is already lower than the industry’s (12.36 and 15.56 respectively).

Read more....

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.

An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
 

Zee Business Best B-School Survey 2012
Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri's Session at IMA Indore
IIPM IN FINANCIAL TIMES, UK. FEATURE OF THE WEEK
IIPM strong hold on Placement : 10000 Students Placed in last 5 year
IIPM's Management Consulting Arm-Planman Consulting
Professor Arindam Chaudhuri - A Man For The Society....
IIPM: Indian Institute of Planning and Management
IIPM makes business education truly global
Management Guru Arindam Chaudhuri
Rajita Chaudhuri-The New Age Woman
IIPM B-School Facebook Page
IIPM Global Exposure
IIPM Best B School India
IIPM B-School Detail
IIPM Links

IIPM : The B-School with a Human Face

UTV’s ambitions in the mobile space

Manish Agarwal was hired to drive UTV’s ambitions in the mobile space. He defends some critical factors, including fall in revenues and employee retrenchment

B&E: You have just completed a year in this organisation. How’s the work experience different from Microsoft India?
MA: This is a start up. Microsoft started in a garage. Thank god, UTV has a plush office and we are not sitting in a garage! Here you have 10 ideas; one may work, 9 may not. You need to have a vibrant evaluation environment and you need to be nimble footed. Agility is the key in this business.

B&E: Talking about ‘agility’, UTV New Media laid off 20 people last year. What led to that decision?
MA: In a start up, each of us is very clear about our roles. So one year later, we are very well entrenched with the Telecom operators, we have multiple technology partners. In web we have been able to shed the baggage of the past legacy and built an underlying common system, which even a Yahoo and Rediff is struggling to make. So the day we have 5 million or 10 million users across 3-4 verticals, they will all be interconnected and we will thus be able to cross leverage and cross profile people.

B&E: There has been a 34% decline in revenues from UTV New Media vertical. What are you doing to improve the numbers this year?
MA: This year, we are looking at ending the number at around `30 odd crore from `12 crore that we made last year. But I can say that we already have got those numbers in our pockets and therefore we have revised our internal numbers to that effect. This quarter also looks more or less in control. In this business what matters is not the 30-40% but a 2-3 years business and the bet you are taking, the scale of business you are looking at.

Read more......

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.

An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.

Zee Business Best B-School Survey 2012
Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri's Session at IMA Indore
IIPM IN FINANCIAL TIMES, UK. FEATURE OF THE WEEK
IIPM strong hold on Placement : 10000 Students Placed in last 5 year
IIPM's Management Consulting Arm-Planman Consulting
Professor Arindam Chaudhuri - A Man For The Society....
IIPM: Indian Institute of Planning and Management
IIPM makes business education truly global
Management Guru Arindam Chaudhuri
Rajita Chaudhuri-The New Age Woman
IIPM B-School Facebook Page
IIPM Global Exposure
IIPM Best B School India
IIPM B-School Detail
IIPM Links

His strategy seemed to have paid off

O. P. Bhatt took over the reins of sbi when private players were catching up. He decided to go slow and his strategy seemed to have paid off. With SBI’s profits two times that of its closest rival ICICI Bank, sbi is far ahead of its competitors by any means

B&E: What steps have been takn by you to bring down the NPAs?
OPB: We are making continuous efforts to bring down the NPAs and we have restructured loans for the same. Then we have our Stressed Asset Resolution Centres (SARCs), which too work towards bringing down the bad loans. They identify assets as and when they get stressed and then start working on them to ensure that do not turn bad.

B&E: The bank has been able to bring down the cost of deposits from 6.16% in June 2009 to 5.27% in June 2010. How has it been possible?
OPB: It’s because we have been able to reduce our high cost deposits. We will try to lower the cost of deposits further and if we cannot do that, we will try to maintain the low levels that we have been able to achieve.

B&E: Do you plan to raise capital in the near future? If yes, how?
OPB: We certainly plan to raise capital in the future. However, we are still working on it. In fact, we have a plan to raise about `200 billion by the end of the current financial year. The capital would be raised by way of rights issue, which will keep the government holding unchanged. If we do not raise it by way of rights issue, then the other options are preference shares and FPO (follow-on public offer).

B&E: You just said that you are upwardly biased on interest rates. Does that mean that the banks will not give good offers during the upcoming festival season?
OPB: Banks can give good offers during the festival season and they will surely do that because the festival season draws a lot of customers and no bank would like to miss that opportunity. But then, the rate that they offer will have to be above the base rate.

B&E: RBI has made it clear that they do not have issues in giving new banking licences to industrial houses? Is this a bad news for the exsisting players?
OPB: This is a philosophical thing. There are arguments both ways. In my view, if an industrial house gets a banking licence then the onus is on RBI to see that the things are done in the right manner. We all know that we need more banking facility to achieve the financial inclusion goal. Hence, we certainly need more banks in the system.

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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.

An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.

Zee Business Best B-School Survey 2012
Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri's Session at IMA Indore
IIPM IN FINANCIAL TIMES, UK. FEATURE OF THE WEEK
IIPM strong hold on Placement : 10000 Students Placed in last 5 year
IIPM's Management Consulting Arm-Planman Consulting
Professor Arindam Chaudhuri - A Man For The Society....
IIPM: Indian Institute of Planning and Management
IIPM makes business education truly global
Management Guru Arindam Chaudhuri
Rajita Chaudhuri-The New Age Woman
IIPM B-School Facebook Page
IIPM Global Exposure
IIPM Best B School India
IIPM B-School Detail
IIPM Links

irat Bahri wonders whether the debate is relevant at all

Is a corporation meant to look at the larger good or just at profit maximisation? the debate continues to catch the imagination of executives and academicians. Virat Bahri wonders whether the debate is relevant at all

We believe that the very basis of this debate, just like the debate between growth and equality (that they are necessarily contradictory) is weak. Shareholder value and social responsibility can coexist quite well. Drawing correlations between profitability and social good is too tasking even for the most prolific economists; but there are numerous instances of companies that balance the two quite well. And the most convincing evidence of that can be found in our own B&E Power 100 list of India’s most profitable companies for 2010. In fact, the select group of companies that we have featured in this issue from the list are focusing on social good and also consistently proving to be prolific wealth generators in their own right.

State Bank of India had relatively flat growth to register profits of Rs.91.66 billion and was at rank 5 this year (Rank 3 last year). Net Interest Income (NII) increased by an impressive 13.91% as compared to the previous year and the bank’s Net Interest Management (NIM) has also improved to 3.18% if you consider results for the quarter ending June 2010. Fee-based income increased by 26.57% yoy for the year and forex income also grew by 34.59% yoy. Meanwhile, it also serves a vital role in the government agenda as a PSU, with its network of 7400 rural and semi-urban branches, which help the agri sector. Around Rs.560 billion of advances from SBI reach approximately 7 million farmers. Once again, this should have an indirect positive effect on SBI as rural prosperity improves, since it will have built a strong relationship of trust with them.

Infosys Technologies retains its position as India’s most profitable IT company and ranks 8th on the list this year (at 7th position last year). After a tough recessionary phase, Infosys has been consciously working towards increasing its client base and having a greater spread of revenues both in terms of verticals and geographies. For 2009-10, its $1 million plus client base expanded to 338 (from 166 in FY 2004-05) and revenue per client has increased slightly to $8.4 million (from $8.1 million in FY 2008-09), as the company sees a more optimistic outlook from its clients. While the contribution of BFSI revenues hasn’t varied much, contribution of manufacturing has gone up significantly. Meanwhile, on the social front, Infosys has highlighted three key binding themes for its sustainability initiatives – social contract, resource efficiency and green innovation. Among other initiatives, it opened the Infosys Science Foundation, in fiscal year 2008-09 a not-for-profit trust for scientific research. Even in the midst of downturn and uncertain outlook, the company made it a point to honour all its hiring commitments in campuses. It may not go down in history as a great initiative for shareholders, but the credibility that such initiatives establish is invaluable, for they will also help Infosys attract the best talent in the country.

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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.

An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.

Zee Business Best B-School Survey 2012
Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri's Session at IMA Indore
IIPM IN FINANCIAL TIMES, UK. FEATURE OF THE WEEK
IIPM strong hold on Placement : 10000 Students Placed in last 5 year
IIPM's Management Consulting Arm-Planman Consulting
Professor Arindam Chaudhuri - A Man For The Society....
IIPM: Indian Institute of Planning and Management
IIPM makes business education truly global
Management Guru Arindam Chaudhuri
Rajita Chaudhuri-The New Age Woman
IIPM B-School Facebook Page
IIPM Global Exposure
IIPM Best B School India
IIPM B-School Detail
IIPM Links

9/11 reloaded?

A mosque at ground zero would end up defeating its most valuable purpose, so the project must not go ahead

Peace and harmony between religions is a future that this world continues to aspire for. Obama’s pronounced support to the idea of a mosque at Ground Zero does have the right intent in that sense. Yet this move comes across as one that defeats its own purpose.

The $100 million plan to develop an Islamic community center with a mosque from just two blocks away from the World Trade Centre where 3000 people were killed borders on insensitivity. The White House didn’t comment on the mosque controversy till Obama cleared the air at the White House Iftar dinner when he backed the mosque stating that “as a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country.” Quite a few other nations of the world do not allow freedom of religion like China, Iran and Arab countries. So for a change, this is one of the better symbolic gestures from US.

What makes it more of the opposite is the backdrop in which it is being planned. The idea has created tremendous polarity. Republican Senator Newt Gingrich expressed an extremely controversial criticism when he said “Nazis don’t have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust Museum in Washington.” The comparison isn’t even fit for debate, but the mosque issue needs to be looked at more sensitively by the government. A mosque is the symbol of peace and love, but having a mosque at Ground Zero has the potential to create the wrong vibes and even increase animosity between different faiths.

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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.

An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.

Zee Business Best B-School Survey 2012
Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri's Session at IMA Indore
IIPM IN FINANCIAL TIMES, UK. FEATURE OF THE WEEK
IIPM strong hold on Placement : 10000 Students Placed in last 5 year
IIPM's Management Consulting Arm-Planman Consulting
Professor Arindam Chaudhuri - A Man For The Society....
IIPM: Indian Institute of Planning and Management
IIPM makes business education truly global
Management Guru Arindam Chaudhuri
Rajita Chaudhuri-The New Age Woman
IIPM B-School Facebook Page
IIPM Global Exposure
IIPM Best B School India
IIPM B-School Detail
IIPM Links

Betting big on the inorganic mode

First it was the Bank of Madura. Then, it was Bank of Sangli. And now, the Bank of Rajasthan. ICICI Bank is seemingly strengthening its presence in the Indian banking space by undertaking a slew of acquisitions much like its peer HDFC Bank did in the past. by Avneesh Singh

It was the February of 2008. The world was yet to come face-to-face with the debacle of the US banking giant Bear Stearns. Yet in India, officials of the largest private sector bank, ICICI Bank, had started feeling the heat. And it was not for the fact that they had already predicted the slowdown that was coming their way, it was due to the acquisition of the Centurion Bank of Punjab (CBoP) that proved the genesis of all headaches in the ICICI camp. CBoP had been on the radar of ICICI Bank for quite sometime already, but it was HDFC Bank that finally got hold of CBoP. ICICI Bank, which had held on to its numero uno position in the private banking space and second slot in the banking space apparently felt that it was losing its ground. It made ICICI realise that something’s got to give, if it wanted to avoid nightmares of the likes of HDFC Bank, Axis Bank and Punjab National Bank beating it with the lesson cane! It decided that growing inorganic was the route to redemption.

What followed was interesting. Despite the Bear Stearns episode in March 2008, the Indian banking scenario continued sauntering without many hiccups. There were promises in the air, especially the air above the Indian banks. But something set the cat amongst the pigeons – the crash of the banking behemoth Lehman Brothers, which filed for bankruptcy in September 2008. The world economy was heading for its worst crisis since the Great Dipression and Indian banks set off the alarm. One which set off the louded was ICICI Bank. Reason – during that point in time, it had an exposure of around 57 million euros in Lehman senior bonds and another $30 million in the insurance company American International Group (AIG), whose financial health too was as shaky as Lehman Brothers’. ICICI Bank was forced to pack its dreams (of steaming past others of its ilk in the Indian space) in a suitcase and catch the next flight to the land of protectionism. Times were too risky to take a plunge and ICICI Bank wanted to play safe.

More than a 21 months later, after a prolonged phase of silence, the bank has stepped back into its aggressive boots. And this time around, it has given clear indications of a desire to grow through both organic and inorganic means. Even Chanda Kochhar (CEO of ICICI Bank) has done much work towards rebuilding the perception of the bank amongst its customers. May 3, 2010, also saw ICICI open its 2000th branch in the country (it opened it in Andheri West, Mumbai). But there was more in store for the market. Withing 20 days, the Board of Directors of the bank approved an amalgamation of Bank of Rajasthan (BoR) with ICICI Bank, subject to approval by shareholders and Reserve Bank of India, therefore sending that signal of aggression to competitors and customers alike.

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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.

An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri 
and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles. 

Prof. Rajita Chaudhuri's Website
domain-b.com : IIPM ranked ahead of IIMs
Arindam Chaudhuri's Portfolio - he is at his candid best by Society Magazine 
IIPM Best B School India
Management Guru Arindam Chaudhuri
Rajita Chaudhuri-The New Age Woman
IIPM's Management Consulting Arm-Planman Consulting
Professor Arindam Chaudhuri - A Man For The Society.... 
IIPM: Indian Institute of Planning and Management
IIPM makes business education truly global
IIPM B-School Detail

From healing touch to heeling touch…

From healing touch to heeling touch… Women have an incredibly wider spectrum of influence than one could have ever anticipated!! 

It is natural to drop one’s guard while in conversation with the opposite sex; let alone the female touch in question. It is a fact that opposites attract, and it is not a matter of self deprecation if such a scenario comes to the fore because “Complex interplay of hormones and pheromones released during an inter-sex conversation is postulated to hinder abstract thinking, instant decision taking abilities, rationalisation and may influence intuitive abilities,” says Dr. Vinant Bhargava, Physician, Sir Gangaram Hospital.

From legendary epics of ‘Mahabharata’ and ‘Ramayan’ (not to forget Kekai’s tantrums in Ramayan which led to the exile of Lord Ram) to the present day ‘home frontiers’ and ‘cut-throat corporate arenas’, women have succeeded in turning the tables everywhere. It’s not the women who are at fault here. It’s human tendency to take advantage of a situation where undue leeway is being provided for one to behave as desired. Female touch is probably not the only driving force providing reassurance to an individual or the confidence to go ahead and bear risk. Point to be pondered here is that is there a possibility that it could be the ‘human touch’ which is the stimulant? A group of friends or a confidant is not subject to any caste, creed or sex. Hence how one deals, invests or operates around or without one’s support system is an individual’s call. The only disclaimer is ‘offer documents may be subject to market risks… please read the offer documents carefully before investing!’

Read more.....

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.

An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri 
and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles. 

Prof. Rajita Chaudhuri's Website
domain-b.com : IIPM ranked ahead of IIMs
Arindam Chaudhuri's Portfolio - he is at his candid best by Society Magazine 
IIPM Best B School India
Management Guru Arindam Chaudhuri
Rajita Chaudhuri-The New Age Woman
IIPM's Management Consulting Arm-Planman Consulting
Professor Arindam Chaudhuri - A Man For The Society.... 
IIPM: Indian Institute of Planning and Management
IIPM makes business education truly global
IIPM B-School Detail

On the wings of some vanity & wax

Subhiksha was a dream flight, which crash-landed as soon as it took off; B&E presents a decisive story covering a summary of its flawed strategies and the way forward. by Pawan Chabra

Surviving One Bad Year: 7 Spiritual Strategies to Lead You to a New Beginning. In this shallow chick lit, Nancie Carmichael – an author who seems to have graduated from parenting books to self help hocus – spawns chapter after chapter of spiel on not only how to handle personal loss, but even bankruptcy! She doesn't stop there – there's more mumbo jumbo on how to handle depression, disappointment, betrayal, and yes, job losses too! Hilariously, if one does a post-hoc analysis, it just seems that if R. Subramanian, founder, Subhiksha, had even blindly followed the quirky advice conjured up by Ms.Nancie, Subhiksha might have been a better company than what it is now. But as they say, journalistic advice is as infidel a virtue as the devil's religion. Be that as it may, we still decided to go ahead and present a contemporary synopsis of what went wrong with Subhiksha and where is the erstwhile retail star heading to now!

Prosperity is the literal translation of the name Subhiksha from the Sanskrit language. To its credit, the retailer did remain true to the name for more than a decade with its business model, a legacy that even saw eulogies emanating sporadically from industry associations. Then how did the company manage to literally shoot itself? This case study provides lasting lessons in retail strategy.

Subhiksha commenced operations in 1997 and took the conservative route for nine years in the booming retail industry. The clear focus was on establishing its brand name in the country before going for the kill. After making consistent efforts to get a tighter grip on the Indian consumer for the past 11 years, it was announced in early 2008 that the retail chain will invest a whopping Rs.500 crore to increase the number of outlets to 2000 across the country by 2009. Was this target too aggressive, critics asked, keeping in mind that the company had just touched 150 stores across the country in the first nine years of its operations?

Quite possibly. Nevertheless, the company's sales were also growing by leaps and bounds; from a mere Rs.3.3 billion for financial year 2005-06 to Rs.8.33 billion for FY 2006-07, going on further to touch a mind-boggling figure of Rs.23.05 billion for FY 08. Soon enough, media and industry experts were reporting the Subhiksha model (a no-frills model aimed at gaining consumer confidence by offering the lowest prices in the industry attracting the price-sensitive segment of Indian consumers – the largest) as the most successful one in retail; even home-grown counterparts and several multinational firms started rolling out formats inspired from its business model. It was all looking like a dream come true, with R. Subramanian – an IIT & IIM alumnus – driving the growth story. Money was flowing in from PE players and industrialists. ICICI Ventures, which was an entrant during the early years of Subhiksha, became the second largest shareholder after promoters with an exposure of billions of rupees. Notably, PremjiInvest, the PE arm of billionaire Azim Premji, bought a 10% stake in Subhiksha from ICICI Venture in 2008 for Rs.2.3 billion. Subhiksha itself invested in an NBFC for future long term growth funding. With 1,600 stores already set up, even the ambitious target of 2,000 stores for the year looked very achievable.

But something, somewhere, started to go wrong. Reports started filtering in – employees complaining about unpaid salaries, suppliers complaining about huge outstanding payables, rents, bills, and more... Stores started shutting down when funds started drying up. However, the company claimed strongly that there was nothing wrong as these were normal economic slowdown issues and that the stores will be reopened by June 2009.

And then came the shocker! Reports came in that Subhiksha had inflated revenue figures, fudged accounting transactions, and transferred money to non-existing companies. An adamant Subramanian refuted all allegations, and refused to handover the company's reins. Push ultimately came to shove, and finally, facing extremely angry creditors, employees, shareholders (even Premji sent legal notices), and left with a bleeding skeletal firm, R. Subramanian, the brain behind Subhiksha, grudgingly shut shop, yet refusing to "run away."

As it now goes through a corporate debt restructuring plan, the chances of the retailer making a comeback look very bleak. “Subramanian is a great mind and his model was very successful but he was at the wrong place with the wrong people and took the wrong decisions. He has today lost his credibility in the Indian retail market,” says an industry expert to B&E on the condition of anonymity.

On hindsight, considering the fake inventory, fake bills and fake companies to which money was transferred, Subhiksha shares a lot of similarities with the largest scam in the Indian market, Satyam Computers Services – though Premji minces no words while referring to his investment in the retail chain as an error and titles the company 'the Satyam of the Indian retail industry’ in an interview to a business daily. But the bleeding retailer is quite fortunate as it has been able to stay out of problems of the magnitude that Satyam faced, where the founder Ramalinga Raju is behind bars and even the auditors and the sister concerns have tasted rough waters.

It is widely believed that the massive expansion plan – mistimed horribly with the onset of the economic slowdown – was the critical tipping point. “The business model per se was very strong and also makes sense in today’s environment; but it was the massive expansion that caused the failure. The empty shelves and a weak back-end changed the consumers’ perceptions about the company,” says Zahir Abbas, Associate Director-Retail, KSA Technopak. Our text messages and phone calls made to R. Subramanian are left unanswered. Even ICICI Ventures, which now holds about 23% in Subhiksha, and still has an estimated exposure of about Rs.1.06 billion in it, chooses to abstain from answering B&E's queries.

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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.

An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri 
and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

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