Goddess divided ...

Just go through these pics ... Do you think all of these products belong to the same brand? Do they look similar in any way at all, except that Lakme is written on them?

As opposed to that, lets take a look at Himalayas for instance.

Lakme has been a household name for ages; the only brand that catered to the beauty needs of Indian women. From everything that I see in the market, I see Lakme going down. Heres hoping that they can turn it around and that Indians two generations down remember the french name for Godess Laxmi.

-Kashy

The most 'happening' news today ...

1. WallMart to enter India in a 50:50 JV with Bharti. I seriously would not want to be Kishore Biyani right now!

2. Court to pass judgement on Sanjay Dutt's involvement in the 93 blasts. Lets hope his Gandhigiri pays off.

3. IIMA students starting a women's lingerie company. I wonder if I would get any work done at all in such a business.

4. A new study in the US says money can buy happiness. These americans are crazy ... (tap tap tap as in Asterix cartoons).

5. Bush says Iraq war entering a 'violent' phase. Maybe he thinks that till now it was satyagrah going on over there. Dubya man continues to outdo himself!

Thats all for now.

-Kashy

golmaal hai bhai sab golmaal hai ...

strictly for engineers. baaki log padhna bhi mat. warnaa gaali doge.

Step 1:

square(1)=1
square(2)=2+2
square(3)=3+3+3
square(4)=4+4+4+4
.
.
.
square(x)=x+x+x+x ... x times

Step 2:

Differentiate on both sides

LHS = d/dx (square(x)) = 2x

RHS = d/dx (x+x+x+ ... x times) = 1+1+ ... x times = x

2x=x

How is this possible? Happy solving. Agar fundae gol huwe to pataa chal jayegaa.

-Kashy

Musical Geometry

In my second year of IIT, I wanted to learn the guitar. So I got one and started strumming it. I asked aadi, a fellow southieite and my 2nd year roomie, to teach me how to play it. (aadi, uff fluf fluf, uff gaund, uff lots of other things. a wierdo, but one of my closest friends too)

Now he taught me 3 chords to start. I still know how to play them. I think they were G, C and C major or something like that. Apparently my playing was quite clean.

But in a couple of days, playing chords became so damn boring! It was an ordeal to pick up some new chords and keep doing the same thing. And aadi told me that for the first 1-2 months thats all I would have to practise to learn the guitar.

My reaction was like .. "no songs?" .. so then he taught me how to play songs .. i watched his finger positions and learnt to dplicate them real fast .. learnt "tujhe dekha to ye jaana sanam" and "o o jaane jaana" .. senti songs very much in vogue then .. that was fun ..

and then the guitar passed out of conscious awareness ... the poor thing was cracked open by Bala sometime in third year and later used up as fuel for one of our wing bon-fire parties.

Thats been my bout with music ... that is in terms of trying to make music.

Well, a month back a very dear friend, Meera, tried to teach me fundaes of how classical music has these concepts of ragas ... ragas are specific algorithms of the different notes in any musical composition and one raga can be used to create a fair variation of music ... while the basic notes would remain the same, the musical composer can play around with the quality of each note by varying the instrument involved etc. Sounded very logical and scientific to me .. I was a bit surprised to find such an organized approach to music, mostly considered as a refined art and assumed to be remote from any logical construct.

Then this thought struck me ... that what if the sounds that we like follow a fixed trend? As in notes in a specific sequence of frequency/amplitude/quality etc. would always create a pleasing response? The parameters that define one musical note are the frequency, amplitude and quality. Frequency defines shrillness, amplitude defines volume and quality is decided by the instrument it comes from (quality is quite difficult to define for me).

If we take all the musical peices and break them up into their component functions of frequency, amplitude and quality and then have a wide range of people rank these peices, we can then do a correlation analysis of the musical graph with its rankings. We can then isolate sequences and trends which are most likely to get a favourable response. Effective programming and enough data to go by, can then create a software that mizes and matches and creates unique musical peices which are sure to be loved by the audience. We could create a Digital Musical Composer!

I hope someone tries out all of this. Cause I'm too lazy to do so.

Yukon ho,

-Kashy

Griffin's fancy

A griffin is this mythological creature which is supposed to be a half lion half horse with wings .. he is said to seek out treasure .. each place he lands in has treasure .. whether he finds it or creates it is not very clear ..

Anyway, thats hardly the point .. The first business plan I made which made it to the final round of Eureka, the BPlan competition hosted by IIT Bombay, was named Griffin Inc. And post that whatever business plan I've worked on ... secretly I want to name it the same.

Actually, thats not the point either .. I started writing this entry to put down an idea ..

Currently in the Indian FMCG market, each company has its own sales and distribution network. This system exists in quite a few other countries as well, with fragmented retail. Eventually the modern trade channel will grow to substitute traditional trade up to a large extent. This however is a gradual process and in India traditional trade will continue to be significant for the next 20 years.

The thought that struck me a couple of years back was that there was great savings to be made if we have a single market servicing setup for all the products that a grocery retailer sells. There could be daily replenishment and a single unit/entity would need to visit the outlet. Greater convenience for the retailer and economies of scale leading to savings in the supply chain.

The strength of a business that takes this up would be firstly through the savings on the sales and distribution cost that the companies are currently incurring with their own structures. Secondly, the scale would enable this business to compete with the likes of Reliance and Big Bazaar on prices. Well, not exactly compete but definitely reduce the differential in prices. This would make it less desirable to go to these stores from a price angle. Thirdly, with the top grocery retailers included in the network which would be serviced by such a business, the purchase point could be invested in and the shopping experience made as friendly and entertaining as possible. This would reduce the differential in the shopping experience as well.

Effectively the model would emerge as a convenience store retail chain which would expand at an insane pace, as investment in real estate is not needed. The trick is to identify the right retailers - retailers who are feeling the pinch of modern trade eating away their business and feel the need for such an alternative. The business would work on huge scale and a margin of around 2% or less.

The time is just right for such a venture in the retail space, as the retailers around modern trade outlets are feeling the pinch of sales plumetting and people migrating to the other shopping formats and discounted offerings. It needs to be done at a scale which brings out the benefits, as for a small scale operation the model is just not viable.

If theres anyone who finds this thought exciting buzz me on it. Would be fun to talk about it in more detail.

yukon ho,

- Kashy

Care for a code?

For those of you who fancy cryptics, here is one. Try solving it. I ended up creating my own code maker program on reading the book.

evib mrxvob wlmv. tl tvg blfihvou z givzg.

Best of luck.

-Kashy

The Code Book ... A must read!

For those of you who are fascinated by the unknown, by good riddles, puzzles, problems and cryptics, The Code Book by Simon Singh is a must read!

This book is a dedication to the art of code making and code breaking over the last 4000 years. It covers the primitive alphabetic ciphers to the complex ones used during the renaisance period. The most rivetting account for me however, was the entire story of the two world wars and how they were pretty much dictated by the code making and code breaking skills of the two fronts. This was an angle previously unknown to me, and it suddenly made it obvious that as we move forward into the information age, conventional weapons are suddenly going to become redundant. If someone has cutting edge information to go by, a hand grenade can do more damage than a nuclear warhead!

At the end of the book, there are 10 cryptics for you to solve, arranged from very easy to very difficult. Its fun to try out code breaking for yourself!

Pension Funds and Global Monetary Liquidity?

Whats the link? What do pension funds have to do with liquidity in the monetary markets?

A friend of mine, Rajat, mentioned this to me in a recent discussion. The funda starting from a very different problem. The ageing population in the west.

The percentage of oldies is going up in the west. Now all of these people need to be given pension. The pension to these people needs to come from the taxes paid by the current working population. Now the current population is declining, meaning that the working population is continuosly getting smaller. On top of that these idiots are not working as hard as the earlier generations did. So whats the result? The well known pension fund crisis! That in some time to come there will be a severe crisis in the payment of pensions to the elderly population.

So what do the pension funds do? They try to get a higher rate of investment on their funds. Consequently the investments get more riskier in anticipation of higher returns. A percentage of the pension fund monies find their way to Hedge funds and Mutual funds. Through these they go into developing economies, startup ventures, equity markets and so on. Thereby due to the pressure for higher returns, monies find their way to any place which can assure a higher rate of return. Thus the high level of liquidity in the world markets.

Some of these macro economic trends are quite interesting and least expected. Did you ever think that because there are more old men in Europe now, a startup would get funded in India?

-Kashy

Gnome?

Thought I would post an update about what I'm up to.

I quit HLL in June. July was mostly spent making merry. Since August I've been working on a startup in the field of branded casual wear in India.

I'm doing this with a couple of friends. One is Sushant Sreeram and the other is Navneet Rai. Ek Andhra-ite aur ek Bihari! Sometimes I wonder why I got into it at all ... :P

These days I'm either with designers who want to fill each and every design with a thousand colors or with manufacturers who keep telling me that each additional color is gonna add to cost. Either with designers who try to explain to me the difference between rose red and blood red and the other 15 kinds of red or with printers who seem to think orange is red!

Well, I can only say that life is far from boring.

If you want to know more about the team or what we are working on, please visit http://gnomedforever.blogspot.com. Thats the website for Gnome, one of our brands soon to be launched.

-Kashy

Brand loyalty to Brand responsibility

Like any major game changing trend, Web 2.0 will have its ripples moving through various aspects of business strategy. Just a while ago I was having a chat with my friend Sushant.

Interesting discussion. He expressed that the next big trend in marketing will be a shift from Brand loyalty to Brand responsibility.

The basic thought being that if the consumer is actively involved in creating the content/product, then it goes a step beyond being loyal to a brand. He/she is now creating the brand itself and therefore this would mean a sense of responsibility for the brand. He/she would become a virtual brand ambassador and stake holder in the performance of the brand.

It will then be the brands which can create a strong sense of brand responsibility that succeed in the marketplace.

Hmm ... sounds neat.

-Kashy

Web 2.0

I've been working on a startup over the last 3 months. Interestingly, I came across the concept of Web 2.0 while working in the apparel industry, which apparently doesn't have anything to do with the web saga.

Web 2.0 is said to be the next big thing in the internet arena. Its the next big game changer.

So what is Web 2.0?
Web 2.0 is the name used for the basic trend of consumers creating their own content and more importantly managing the content. This is best explained through an example.

Lets say there is an online newspaper. Now, till now it was pretty similar to the offline newspaper, in the sense that the editor would plan the layout - the headlines, the editorials, top news in all the different sub heads and so on. Come to think of it, it is not at all different from the offline paper.

Now under Web 2.0 what would happen to the normal online newspaper? What would happen is that people would rank news. The headlines would get decided by the number of hits each news item gets. Each article would have an authenticity score based on what the readers believe. Therefore when you read it, you would know what the pulse of the city, state, country or the world is; what do the people believe and so on. It would no longer depend on what an editor thinks is most important. The consumers are managing the content themselves.

Another is the case of Youtube. The consumers create their own videos or post the videos they like. Youtube only facilitates the process.

Why is Web 2.0 the next big thing?

Traditionally marketeers have tried to increase the involvement of the consumer with their brands. The more closely the consumers are involved with the brand, the stronger the brand.

This they tried through their advertisement campaigns, the product, the packaging and the normal rigmarol. The techniques of interacting with the consumer have been very indirect. The process has been very serial; in the sense that there would be market research which studies the consumer. Second stage would be developing the product based on the market research. The third stage would be to develop sales and marketing techniques to sell what is developed. Finally the consumer would see what the marketeer has made for him/her and vote on it with his dollar spend.

The power of Web 2.0 comes by the disruption it can create in this tried and tested chain. In Web 2.0 the consumer gets directly involved with the designing process. The challenge is no longer to drive excellence in the functions of market research and consumer insight generation. The challenge is to create an environment where the consumer is excited about contributing and influencing the product creation.

This is a totally different ball game and companies who do not move fast enough to the change that Web 2.0 brings won't be around for long.

- Kashy