Aircel
Aircel in india is a part of the maxis group based out of Malayasia. It is an initiative of Anand Krishnan. They are the the seventh player in India.
How end of Fed QE2 will affect stock market – Financials – Futures Magazine
How end of Fed QE2 will affect stock market – Financials – Futures Magazine.
“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”….wish I could say this, so much to do and so little time
Jim Collins meets Capt Gopinath
Sometime back I was reading Jim Collin’s “Good to Great” and the I noted that there were a few things that he talks about as being the commonalities between companies that have made the leap successfully. These were as follows:
1. These companies have always had leaders who have put the “WHO” before the “WHAT”. This essentially means that they have first decided on the core team and then they have worked on the goal. Jim draws an analogy with a bus journey and he says that when the passengers who have boarded the bus are comfortable with the group and enjoy traveling together, the journey becomes all the more pleasurable. However, when the people on the bus decide to make the trip only because the bus is committed to a particular destination, then in case there is a need to take a detour or change directions, then the passengers could get uncomfortable and would wish to jump the bus. So, the upshot of this is that the team is more important and should get primacy over the vision or the goal, that is secondary.
2. The second thing that the book talks about is something called the Stockdale principle, which refers to this famous American POW in Vietnam who was imprisoned and subjected to immense physical and mental torture for 5 years, and yet managed to survive the war and start all over again. When asked as to who were the ones who could not finally make it to the end, Stockdale had responded with a single word….”the optimists”. His explanation was that the optimists always set deadlines for their release ( by Christmas next, or by next Easter) and whenever this did not materialize they went into a depression and lost their nerve. Stockdale’s philosopy which Jim Collins maintains applies to all Great companies is as follows:
” Never lose faith in your eventual success in the long term, but always be aware and accept the grim realities of the present”
3, The third thing that the book mentions is the “porcupine effect” , drawing an analogy to the porcupine which always draws itself into a ball with its spikes outward, whenever attacked. Its a single minded effort at protecting itself from all forms of attack, nothing fancy & very straight forward. All Great companies have this ability to stay focused on their goals based on the principle of the 3 circles which is discussed below.
4. The principle of the 3 circles rests of asking the 3 questions:
a) What CAN I be good at ….and not what SHOULD I be good at?
The interesting thing is that when you ask this question it debunks the principle of “core competency”. For e.g. Aventis has always been a pharmaceutical company, but its position was a distant tenth or further. It did not have the capability or the resources to compete with the pharma majors in the development of new drugs and hence its chances of enhancing its position was extremely limited. It realized that although its core competency was pharmaceuticals, it needed to understand what it COULD be good at, and NOT what it SHOULD be good at. From that realization, they started focusing on nutritionals and other other allied lines of product and established themselves as a leader in the field.
b) The second was the understanding of the economic metric which would be used to define the business.
For e.g. Walgreen ( the biggest pharma retailer in the US) decided to change its metric from maximizing profit per store to maximizing share of the customer wallet per visit. This changed their approach from having stores in slightly out of the way locations( to reduce rentals) and not too many stores in the same area ( to reduce cutting into each store’s profits), to setting up stores in the busiest of city centres and multiple stores with the same geographical area. the idea being that a Walgreen will never be too far away from anywhere and having increased the number of stocking items per store, it ensured that a customer would always find whatever he was looking for in his immediate vicinity, thereby precluding the need to travel to a separate store.
c) What can I be passionate about?
The idea being that with everything being in place, if the passion in doing and executing the work was not there, the business would never go far. Passion is what makes the employees go the extra mile to get things done.
Currently reading a very different tome ” Simply Fly” , the story of Deccan Airways and Aviation by Capt Gopinath, was struck by the truisms between what Jim Collins had written about in his book and the experiences of the Captain.
Gopinath, an ex Army man was struck by the immense possibility of setting up a helicopter service in India. However, in the 1990′s, while the Indian economy was still opening up, the era of licence raj was still very much a reality. Gopinath, once he had made up his mind on setting up a helicopter service in India, first got his core team in place even though he had no clearances, no funding and no helicopters. The team worked relentlessly for 2 years to put everything together, and one step at a time they managed to get things in place, finally securing funding leading up to the leasing of the first craft. This validated the first point that Jim makes of the WHO before the WHAT.
The second important thing that struck me in his story was how inspite of several setbacks….bureaucratic, financial and environmental within this two years, Gopinath and his team never lost faith that they would prevail at the end. Ignoring red tape, graft, financial institutions not buying into the story, leasing companies backing out due to an unstable government at the center, the team persisted and circumvented each and every challenge that they encountered. This validates the Stockdale principle.
Another very interesting thing in the Deccan story is about the thought process behind the LCA ( Low Cost Airline). Gopinath realized that the big guys in the business would try and scuttle his plans of setting up an airline if he competed with them. So, he decided that instead of flying only within the top 4 metros, his airline would provide connectivity between smaller towns and connect them to the main cities, at extremely affordable rates. So, places which had a religious or a business significance, but were not a part of the metros were connected thereby ensuring that the dream of flying was made available to all. But, as the big guys ( Jet and Sahara) were not interested in places like Rajahmundhry and Coimbatore, hence they would not feel threatened.
While dwelling on this and in line with my habit of trying to relate anything that I read to the Beverages industry and particularly the alcobev industry, I was wondering as to why a similar strategy involving Value Scotch ( Haig, Passport) had not worked in India. The size of the Premium Admix segment ( Blenders Pride, Signature, RC) is roughly 7 times that of the Standard Scotch industry and if it is the aspiration of all non -scotch drinkers to graduate to scotches, why then did the value scotch proposition not work. Haig from Diageo, was priced at roughly 25% over Premium Indian Admix, the price differential being Rs 450 for Premium Admix and about Rs.575 for Haig. Drawing a parallel to the LCA, the people who availed this service knew that this was no frills and not as good in terms of the flash and pomp of the full service airlines, but the very prospect of being able to travel by air seemed to make a whole section of the hitherto train travelers try out Deccan. So, I am left to wonder as to why the Premium Admix consumer, whose aspiration is to drink Scotch, not find merit in the Value Scotch proposition. Where did we all go wrong? Why was the category rejected by the consumer to whom this was targeted?
the beatles tribute concerts across delhi, mumbai & kolkata goes off well. hope bangalore & hyd also follow in the same vein
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