Speakers at TEDxGurgaon

After TEDIndia (held in November 2009 in Mysore), TED enthusiasts are showing up in various parts of India – a partial list is here: TEDxAhmedabad, TEDxBaroda, TEDxBengaluru, TEDxChennai, TEDxKonkan, TEDxMumbai, TEDxPilani, TEDxPune, TEDxShekhavati (see more here).

This list, at best, is a good start because the awareness about TED is still “poor”, to put it mildly. Many people who registered for TEDxGurgaon (held on Saturday, 27 February 2010 at Epicentre, Gurgaon), did not turn up (without communicating about their absence) and some attendees did not know about TED.

So, the task is cut out for us!  Let us do our “two bits” in helping spread TED, a non-profit organization “devoted to giving millions of knowledge-seekers around the globe direct access to the world’s greatest thinkers and teachers”. TED’s mission states:

Our mission: Spreading ideas.

We believe passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and ultimately, the world.

So we’re building here a clearinghouse that offers free knowledge and inspiration from the world’s most inspired thinkers, and also a community of curious souls to engage with ideas and each other.

To know how you could help, read here.

TEDx is a program that enables local communities to organize, design and host their own independent TED-like events. These events are expected to mirror TED and the local organizers are advised to be “cross-disciplinary, focused on the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and ultimately, the world”.

TEDx guidelines include playing a minimum of two TEDTalks videos – TEDxGurgaon played many more than that – including Karen Armstrong, Bill Gates, Jamie Oliver and Kiran Sethi. The first of these was an introductory video by Chris Anderson. He talks about his life, career and future of TED (including happiness). Here is an excerpt:

And I discovered that while I’d been busy playing business games, there’d been this incredible revolution in so many areas of interest — cosmology, to psychology, to evolutionary psychology, to anthropology, to — you know, all this stuff had changed. And the way in which you could think about us as a species, and us as a planet had just changed so much, and it was incredibly exciting.

Live speakers are typically allowed 18 minutes. Here is a quick summary on conversations and provocations initiated by Live Speakers.

Kishore Bhargava started off with a talk on Photography (especially, how geeks view/pursue it)- running us through its history from 4 BC to 2009 when Kodak stopped production of its Kodachrome color film. He shared about some latest trends in photography including HDR – High Dynamic Range photography. 

Kishore talked about the impact of using multiple frames per second and illustrated the same with two stunning visuals – one that of snake bite and a needle prick on a water balloon. During the QA session, he shared how the bird feeders at his home attract 32 species of birds directly to his home in Gurgaon.

If you are a photography enthusiast, you might want to view some of the TED Videos (87 on last count) on photography.

Prayas Abhinav shocked many in the audience with his advice to “Get Lost”. The fastest way to so (in life), he says, is to disconnect : simply stop calling back people and stop responding to emails. He warned us that routine interactions are loaded with ‘directional vehicles’, which subtly compel you towards ‘pre-determined’ directions. There is a “pressure “of always having to “add value” and “be of use” to something or someone.

One of his creations is “Bhatka Bhatka” – a pair of shoes (using GPS, java code, LED and vibrator) which blink RED in a known location and the vibration intensity increases as you get nearer to a known location. This helps in discovering new and unknown places in the city. He recommends “Drifting” in this age of information glut and these shoes help people “get lost” and discover new and unknown places in the city.

Chatting with him during the break revealed deeper implications. If you can ‘Get Lost’ from external noise & expectations, you have a chance to connect to your truest self and the subsequent ‘discoveries’ and ‘creations” are likely be invaluable (especially for you, and, often for society as well!).

Prayas calls it ‘The Liberation Zone’!

Over coffee, he suggested creating a workshop for Idea (re-)formation & shaping- especially for entrepreneurs with long tail product ideas.

Osama Manzar shared his life journey – starting with the ‘confusion’ with his name ‘Osama’, his education in a Madarsa (reading Qur’an multiple times without understanding a word) and his career in journalism (Computerword, Hindustan Times). Next, came the success story with his software company called 4Cplus, which he quit in 2002 (sold his options) to start “Digital Empowerment Foundation” (DEF).

DEF works towards taking ICT to rural areas across all languages. He has some powerful ideas on creating a “Bottom Up” revolution in India. This includes a movement to publish a few hundred thousand portals online for village panchayats, MLAs and MPs.

Here is a powerpoint presentation on DEF’s vision and programs.

Atul Chitnis initiated a provocative talk on ‘Online Communities-beyond social networking’ – he observed that Social networking sites like Facebook,  Orkut and Buzz (Except Twitter) are NOT online communities. Most of the interactions on those sites are superficial and ‘Real’ (read meaningful) conversations are lost. This caused a flutter in the audience and a few attempted to defend the social networking sites as an access tool for the masses. 

It seems there are two problems:

• The apparent social ‘malaise’  – inane and vacuous ’social interactions’ (and commercialization – once you are categorized, marketers start hounding you)
• A technological challenge – preserving meaningful conversations and a mechanism to easily search them. Despite hashtags and twitter archiving tools, this clearly is a big challenge. [Read this Twitter Nostalgia - "a good business opportunity"]

Mark Parkinson, Director of the “Best day school in India”,  talked about revamping the education system in India – a long list of proposals and actions items. In a break, we discussed his attempts to implement his vision in other schools and the bureaucratic/societal hurdles he faced. While answering a question, he observed that Life is play and why can’t all studies be fun! It would be a real revolution to have more and schools adopt this philosophy!

Aparna Wilder  shared about her latest project under globalrickshaw (they make short-films to spread awareness about social issues).  Her latest videos follow teenage girls as part of an almost year long program aimed at empowering them with life skills education and sports.

The last talk was  by Abhijit Bhaduri, author of two bestselling novels with MBA acronym – Mediocre But Arrogant and Married But Available. His talk was on ‘What makes you happy’. His proposed three ‘different’ elements – Joy, contentment and happiness. His conclusion: True happiness comes from finding meaning and helping others find their ‘personal significance’.  He referred to Viktor Frankl’s book “Man’s Search for Meaning” and the famous words from Nietzsche:

“He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how.”

During QA session, he warned against “temporary” joy and contentment – for example, he classified money as a ‘hygiene’ factor’ (taking cue from Frederick Herzberg’s theory).

Want MORE happiness? See some of the TED Videos (132 on last count) on happiness!

May you have all the happiness (don’t miss Chris Anderson’s video) in the world!

Long Live TED!

May TEDx events multiply exponentially all over the world!

–Amarendra Srivastava

Franchise 2009 Food, Beverage and Hospitality

Thursday, November 26, 2009. Ashoka Hotel, New Delhi. Day 1 of Franchise India 2009. Continued from Franchise India – Entrepreneurship Summit 2009 – Specialty Retail.

Another interesting session was “Business Opportunities in Food & Beverage Sector”. The speakers were:

• Mahmood Khan, Hospitality Expert Virginia Tech, USA
• Pavan Gandhok, CEO, Litebite Foods
• Gary Moore, MD,The Pizza Co., Thailand
• Rakhee Nagpal, MD & Chairperson of DVS (Moderator)
• Luis Daniel, General Manager, KRR International
• Ankur Sharma, General Manager Business Development , Yo China

Mahmood Khan shared how more than 200 fast food franchise brands have been in developed in USA – a critical factor being ubiquitous Highways (necessitating “quick bites”). He claimed that F&B is a recession-proof business because people will NOT stop eating. His another observation was that today’s customer does not have patience. Technology plays a big role in dealing with customer’s “instant needs”. So, you need to know “real needs of the customer” and continually watch “where the technology is going”.

Pavan Gandhok, CEO, Litebite Foods, opined that the challenge is to present local cuisines in an interesting manner – these items (like vada paav, paav bhaaji, samosa) account for 70-80% of the market and whosoever cracks this code is likely to make lot of money.

Gary Moore, MD, The Pizza Co., was excited about India and said that India is the biggest potential market we have seen in a long time. He emphasized on having “systems in place”. He said, “Brand is a promise of consistency” and successful entrepreneurs achieve that by engineering opportunities for the long-term. Apart from adequate capital, an entrepreneur needs to ask him/herself:

• What have I developed?
• What have I grown?
• What is my passion?

Luis Daniel, General Manager, KRR International, (who started his career as a McDonald crew 25 years ago) shared that after about 3-5 years when operational systems of a business have been set (facilitating smooth expansion), an entrepreneur can “work less and make more”.

Ankur Sharma, General Manager Business Development , Yo China shared that capital needs of a franchise business range from Rs. 3 lakhs to Rs. 1.5 crores. At the smallest level, Kiosk models can yield 100% ROI in one year. A full-fledged restaurant model  can yield 30-35% ROI in one year.

franchise restaurant services market size

Franchise India 2009

Thursday, November 26, 2009. Ashoka Hotel, New Delhi. Day 1 of Franchise India 2009 saw scores of enthusiastic entrepreneurs eagerly evaluating various franchise opportunities (300 brands) in India.

Billed as “Asia’s Biggest Franchise Show”, the event came alive in various sections - Brand License 2009, Entrepreneurship Summit ‘09, Food & Beverage, Fashion franchising, Knowledge Series, Licensing and Retail.

What aroused our curiosity was the “Entrepreneurship Summit 2009″ conference series. Some of the speakers at “Business Opportunities : Specialty Retail” session were:

• Aloke Banerjee, CEO, Rosebys
• Vivek Bali, Group President, Spice Hotspot
• S.Ravikant, COO, Titan Eyewear
• N.P. Singh, Director, Samsonite
• Rajiv Agarwal, The Mobile Store
• Naveen Rakhecha, CEO, Cartridge World

S. Ravikant, COO, Titan Eyewear  was representing Titan, India’s “Largest Specialty Retailer” with turnover of Rs. 3000 Crores. He talked about his franchise offer, “Multi-Brand” Eye+ Retail Stores, as “World Class Optical Stores”. What makes this an attractive opportunity is the fact that most consumers in this space are clueless about quality parameters, concerned about accuracy of lenses and confused about lack of transparency in pricing.

N.P. Singh, shared how Samsonite’s innovations (from 1910) have made it a global leader with 34% of global luggage market share. He presented his Rs. 25+ lakhs franchise opportunity (3 year payback) with a unique offering – “obsolescence replacement”.

A recurring theme was “World Class” – world class products, world class operations, world class systems, world class training, world class technology and so on.

Rajiv Agarwal showcased “The Mobile Store” as a world class shopping experience for the existing fragmented mobile market with a chaotic shopping experience.

Naveen Rakhecha, CEO, Cartridge World shared his gyan, “Look beyond traditional franchise opportunities (Education, F&B, etc). Go for distinguished offering. Unique ideas are likely to give better returns”.

NEXT BUSINESS CAPSULE: Opportunities in Food & Beverage segment.

Money for comfortable existence? Or, are you on your way to becoming a global tycoon?

Do you wish for a stable business? Or, a growing business? Or, an accelerating business which, perhaps, you can sell soon?

What is the most appropriate growth strategy for your business?

• Higher Volumes? And/Or, Higher Margins?
• More (any) Clients? And/Or, More Big Ticket Clients?
• More Revenues? And/Or, More Profits?

Is organizational culture important to you? What kind of culture do you want?

For example, many small businesses in India find it cost-effective (often, inadvertently) to have low salary low retention employees, who may be damaging the internal culture and/or customer relations and business growth.  Would hiring the ‘Best’ make more sense for your business?

Should you allocate resources to enhance Business Processes & Systems?

Should you invest more in implementing Technology? Which Solutions? Why?

Whatever your questions, you don’t want to run around without CLEARLY articulated goals that are regularly communicated down to the last rung of frontline executives.

No fun in having all your people and resources run around in circles when they can actually deliver dramatic results with laser sharp focus.

Clarifying Your Goals is a recurring exercise because things change – business climate, technology, competitors, customer needs, your needs and so on.

One efficient way to do this is to categorize all your goals along TIME HORIZONS – from Immediate and near-term to long-term life goals.  In his book,  Getting Things Done, David Allen presented “The Six-Level Model for Reviewing Your Own Work”:

• Runway : Current Actions
• 10,000+ ft:  Current Projects
• 20,000+ ft: Areas of Responsibility
• 30,000+ ft: 1-2 year Goals
• 40,000+ ft: 3-5 year Vision
• 50,000+ ft: Life

This is a useful first step to start de-cluttering your life and business. Another complimentary tool is a “Mind Map”.

Mind Maps help in creating a WHOLE business picture which can be drilled down to the “Runaway” level.

Created intelligently, it can be a powerful first step in organizing your business to clarify, track, and monitor business goals and results.

With Open Source around, freemind and xmind are great free tools to create Mind Maps.

You can maximize the power of Mind Maps by sharing Mind Maps with your team and asking them to contribute. Xmind, The “Social Brainstorming and Mind Mapping” Tool, allows users to share Mind Maps for collaboration.

Happy De-cluttering, Organizing and Creating What You Wish To in your business!

Days Sales Outstanding

Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) is your company’s average collection period.

The smaller this number, the faster you are in collecting money from clients.

[For the mathematically inclined, a more accurate measure of your Collection Department’s performance is the Percentage of Overdue Amount (monies beyond due date) to Total Due Amount (Total uncollected amount including fresh sales) - also, known as Days Delinquent Sales Outstanding (DDSO). See Advantage of using DDSO to measure the effectiveness of the credit department (http://www.encyclopediaofcredit.com/WebHelp/articles/risk_analysis/art730.htm )].

Depending on the nature of your business (for example, number of transactions, customer profiles, and competition), you may choose from a variety of strategies and tactics to reduce your Accounts Receivables Average.

Tip #1: Re-evaluate your Credit Sales Policy

Why are you selling on Credit? Why not Sell ‘Cash’?

Sell ‘Cash’! On Zero Days Credit! Even better, see how you can collect advance before delivering a product or a service.

Yes, you heard it right!

Question your product/service/marketing strategy – why are you selling on credit, at all?

Take a fresh look at your product/service basket and market segments.

Perhaps, you can identify products/geographical regions where customer will willingly/happily pay cash. This could be because your product or service is tightly coupled with (and/or is essential to) the customer’s workflow and you can create an edge over competitors due to stock availability, location, price, etc.

Create a marketing/selling strategy on how you can channel adequate energies and resources on finding and selling in those areas (Location/Features/Price) where customers will easily pay cash.

Tip #2: Create/Modify/Implement a New Credit Policy which helps you plug cash flow leaks

If you do not have a Credit Policy, create it to achieve clarity and consistency in giving credit to your customers.

If you already have a Credit Policy, revamp it to take advantage of changing market conditions.

Once you have an up-to-date Credit Policy, implement it with rigor and discipline. Make someone accountable to track Credit Policy deviations.

Tip #3: Have a New Customer Policy, Customer Retention Policy & Customer Firing Policy

Don’t do business with any and everyone. Do background checks before committing transaction with a new customer. Identify and give higher priority to faster paying customers. Fire your low-value slow paying customers.

Tip #3: Streamline Your Collections Process

• Insist on having your collection follow-up process move with clock work precision.
• Based on Due Date of Outstanding, schedule the escalation process – Emails, SMS, Calls, Visits and Legal Recourse.
• Ensure that the monitoring team regular sends New Customer Verification Reports, Credit Policy Deviation Alerts, and alerts on payment variations and disputes.

Tip #4: Update Your Customer Contact Details

Over a period of time, customers change their contact persons, phone numbers (including landline), email-ids and even physical locations. Having an updated customer contact database facilitates the collections process and this could be critical in following up on delayed payments and/or taking legal recourse.

Tip #5: Train Your Team to Follow up with rigor and discipline

A well trained tele-calling follow-up team knows when to use appropriate tricks of the trade – like calling on odd-hours, when to insist on cheque number, follow-up based on customer’s cash flow cycle, and so on.

Watch this space for more on each (and many more) of the above.