The paths to power August 22, 2007
Posted by abheek in books, business.4 comments
I finished reading “The Polyester Prince” a good two weeks back, but things have been busy enough that I haven’t had a chance to post a good review yet.
I’m clearly not doing the book justice here.
For the uninitiated, the Polyester Prince describes the meteoric rise to power of Dhirubhai Ambani, one of the biggest success stories in Indian business. The first question that people always ask me about the book is why is it so hard to find.
Well, the answer there is simple. It’s a damning book, describing in great detail the murky side of doing business in India. It reads like a veritable whos-who of Indian business, politics and bureaucracy in the second half of last century.
Is the book accurate? While Hamish McDonald tries to describe sources where possible, given the subject matter, it’s very hard to verify the veracity of these stories.
The author’s writing style, however, leaves a big impression. McDonald writes with the panache of a seasoned journalist. Perhaps the most effective part of the writing is how he refrains from passing judgment, and instead relies on facts and figures to present vignettes. The authors breaks this restraint only in the last chapter, which is devoted entirely to an analysis of the morality of Ambani’s path to power. Even there, he chooses to leave open questions rather than attempt to answer them.
On the one hand, you can argue that Ambani was a person forced by the closed Indian markets to find ingenious ways to circumvent government restrictions. While driven by an ambition that seemed almost impossible to sustain, in the end his decisions were based on the archaic License Raj that plagued the Indian business environment. If one is fiscally conservative enough, you can even go as far as to argue that his actions were merely reactions to a stifled market environment, and that the decaying bureaucracy and legislature serve as reminders of the harmful nature of India’s economic policy in those decades.
However, one also cannot deny that his actions often strayed the thin line between ethical behavior and raw abuse of power. Through an extensive network of connections that he cultivated assiduously, Ambani was able to circumvent rules to destroy any serious competition that he faced. While the morality of these actions is debatable, one cannot but feel angry at a system that encouraged such corruption through an extensive set of rules designed to curb free competition and foster monopolistic practices.
This was one of the most useful texts on modern business I have read in a long time. Most such books rely on a list of case studies that serve to illustrate a theory which in hindsight seems almost obvious. By following Ambani through his career and exploring the details behind his spectacular successes and failures, McDonald brings forth a gritty account of doing business in India, one that is unencumbered by mere theory and instead relies on history to describe the underbelly of these paths to power.
Cut me up. Quick. August 18, 2007
Posted by abheek in rants.1 comment so far
I just need to vent this one.
It all started when I realized I’ll be a little short-changed in the medical insurance department after I quit work. So I figured, let me go and visit my dentist to get one last cleanup before I’m completely unable to afford her services.
And so it all begin.
I go into her office, expecting the worst. After all, three years of free carbonated drinks and candy are bound to take their toll on my cuspids and bicuspids and everything in between.
First off, why do dentists feel the need to make small talk when they have a high-torque drill a few millimeters from my nerve endings? I mean seriously. I know that it’s important to discuss your religious revelations and personal investment strategies with folks around you. But can it not wait until the killing machines have been safely stowed away.
Well anyways, once that was done, it wasn’t too bad. Like ripping a band-aid out. Over the course of 20 minutes. Always feels like a walk in the park after it is over.
As I’m about to get up and leave, she asks me to wait for a bit. “The x-ray results have come out,” she says. Seriously? Didn’t you just take that 2 minutes back? I hold back any snide remarks, afraid it might lead to a more prolonged stay in her not-so-comfy chair.
“Looks like you have a small cavity in the back teeth. Unfortunately, it’s obstructed by one of your wisdom teeth. Do you mind getting that removed so we can fix the small cavity?”
Well, it’s not like you are really asking for my opinion now are you? Ok, I’ll play along.
However, as it turned out, I needed to visit an oral surgeon to get the wisdom teeth removed. So I get a referral, realize that my insurance expires in a week, and go book the first available appointment for my wisdom tooth removal.
Wait, did I say wisdom tooth? The oral surgeon obviously heard wisdom teeth. As he puts it, “Well, they’re not going to be of much use to you, so let’s pull all four out shall we?”. *Smile*.
Again, if there’s one basic tenet I live by it, it’s this. Never argue with a man who’s holding a drill. Ok, we’ll play it your way, ‘Doctor’. I agree and try and get a date for the extraction.
“Oh, and by the way, I’m going to recommend you go to sleep completely while we do this. It’s not a pleasant experience.”
When a dentist says something is “not pleasant,” they usually mean it’s one level worse than debilitating pain, and only slightly above a vacation in hell. So yes, I’m not going to argue with that one either.
“Oh wait, let me see your teeth again,” he says. “Ahh, just as I thought. Well, Mr. A, looks like your lower jaw falls in front of your upper one when you close your mouth. Over 90% of people in the world have it the other way around.”
Well, my mother always said I was special, so no surprises there, ‘Doctor’.
“Perhaps we should fix this. What do you think?”
At this time, I again refer to above-mentioned basic tenet of life to live by. Ok, so what do you have in mind?
“Well, I’ll give you a consult with another oral surgeon. Basically, they’ll take your lower jaw, and push it back so that the upper one falls in front.”
Gulp.
“But of course, sometimes that doesn’t work. In which case, she’ll take a saw, severe your lower and upper jaws, push one of them forward, the other back, and then put them back again with some wires so that the upper jaw falls in front of the lower. Easy peasy.”
Wait what?
At this moment, I mumble something about needing to leave and walk out. I’m a wimp. Sue me. Dentists in the US probably have secret lives working for the government where they take apart unsuspecting citizens and stitch them together to form ultimate fighting machines to combat terrorism.
And they are probably very good at it. But as for my teeth, I think I can probably live a few years without going in for another ’simple cleaning.’
VMWare (sic) August 18, 2007
Posted by abheek in personal, technology.add a comment
Yes. This is the mandatory, and rather staid, commentary on last week’s event-du-jour.
After several years of flying under the radar, VMW finally debuted on the NYSE this week. And it was quite the sensational start, despite recent worries about the credit market downswing that seemed to affect the rest of the market.
It’s exciting, and at the same time, unsettling, to see the average pundit offer their views on the future of a market that most of them didn’t know existed until a few months back. Going forward, I’m sure that everything we do will be under even closer scrutiny. We will be made heroes of, we will be vilified, and we will be the subject of much speculation and commentary.
And amidst all this excitement, I made public my decision to leave the company.
I know I’ll be missing out on some of the most exciting days at VMware, which are sure to be ahead of us. Over the last few weeks, I have seen a spectacular new campus, a bunch of new hires and re-hires, and relentless hogging by the media proclaiming us as the next Google. Which makes the decision to leave harder to explain to people.
I think I need to give up trying to do so.
When the dust settles down, I know that VMware will be doing just as well, even though I won’t be there for the ride. I will, however, be the one toasting to its continued success from the sidelines.
Pushy email August 8, 2007
Posted by abheek in rants, tech-tips.add a comment
Have you ever had that feeling of opening up an old box hidden away in a dusty corner of your house, only to have it unexpectedly reveal something you have been desperately looking for? Eventually, the feeling of being thrilled is replaced by one of frustration at not having found it earlier. If only I had labeled the box correctly. If only I had found it sooner. Why didn’t someone tell me this thing existed.
There’s a point to all of this, I promise.
About a year ago, I decided to move up in the world and buy myself a smartphone. At that time, I didn’t know any better, and just ended up buying a Cingular 2125, a windows mobile device that’s at best borderline ’smart’. My main motivation was simply to be able to use it to access the web, and sync with exchange at work to have a common set of contacts.
That stuff worked pretty well. I was able to use it as a bluetooth modem on my mac to access the internet, and believe me that saved my butt multiple times over the last year (but that’s another post altogether). I was able to sync with outlook, and now my contacts and calendar are in sync with my desktop at work.
This honeymoon lasted for as long as I didn’t use a blackberry and discover the pleasures of over-the-air pushed email. Suddenly, I hated having to connect to the USB port of my desktop just to be able to sync. I wanted email on my device. I wanted over-the-air pushes of my calendar updates. I wanted instant gratification. Period.
And there-in lies the rant.
Windows mobile 5.0 has absolutely the worst UI experience of any device that I have used. Don’t get me wrong. It turns out it has a lot of features. But why, oh why, would it take me a whole year before I can figure out the most important one.
I’m talking, of course, about Exchange Direct Push. It allows me to get instant notifications of updates to my email, tasklist, contacts and calendar, and automagically keeps them in sync with the server. I don’t need to VPN into my work network. No more messy wires. It just works.
But that’s not the point of the email. The point, really, is that if Microsoft had touted this thing earlier, and made it *easy* to configure for users, it would be a killer feature for this class of phones. Seriously. I would’ve moved my lazy ass and dumped my crappy phone to buy this one years ago if I had known.
So here’s the list of things you need to do to get OTA (over the air) direct push email to work with your windows mobile device. All you need is an updated exchange 2003 SP2 server that provides web-mail access.
- Enable direct push on your phone. Go to Comm Manager and click on the “Microsoft DirectPush” icon to enable it.
- To configure email, you need to setup an outlook account. As an illustration of how non-intuitive this is, you need to go into ActiveSync on the phone to set this up.
- Delete any existing outlook account. Doing that requires some device-specific magic. Suffice it to say it took my 10 minutes to figure that one out.
- Add a new Outlook server account. For the server address, enter the URL of the Web Access service provided by your email provider. For example, for Stanford GSB, that would be “gsb-owa.stanford.edu/exchange”. Check the SSL required button if necessary, enter the username/password combination and enter the items you want to sync.
- In ActiveSync -> Options, configure specifics of each item (how many mail messages to sync etc.)
- In ActiveSync -> Schedule, setup your synchronization schedule. For direct push, set “Sync during” to “As items arrive”.
- To configure the device to notify on arrival of new email, go to Start -> Settings -> Sounds and configure a sound for “New e-mail”.
That’s all there is to it really, and voila, you should be able to sync over the air with your exchange server. Sounds trivial. But why, of why, would it take anyone a year to figure this out.
Fine. Maybe I’m just slow. But I think the real problem is that this technology is just not geared towards consumers. Your typical enterprise customer would have this setup by their IT department. Regular Joes, who rely on esoteric features like documentation and a clear UI experience, are out of luck.
Too bad, because this is definitely the most killer feature of Windows smartphones that most people do not even know about.
Searching for the polyester prince August 5, 2007
Posted by abheek in books.8 comments
Some months back, somebody recommended “The Polyester Prince,” a biography of Dhirubhai Ambani, to me. I was told that the book is banned in India, and gives a rather revealing account of his rags to riches story.
Most people in India are familiar with the tale of how Ambani rose from being an oil-filling station attendant to the head of one of the most successful businesses of post-independence India. There is a tendency in India, particularly in the middle class, to vilify successful businesses. I grew up being told stories about how Ambani influenced governments, bought bureaucrats and politicians, threatened competitors and exploited the license raj during his meteoric rise to power. Some of these tales, particularly his altercations with the Wadias and Indian Express, are quite legendary.
The book in question apparently goes to great length to document these details. It is banned in India, but that has never previously stopped people from acquiring such material. For example, the Satanic Verses has been sold on street corners and nooks of established book stores across the country, despite India being one of the first to ban it’s sale. So it was with great confidence that I went about trying to locate the nearest copy of this book.
First stop, amazon.com. Sold out. Looks like it is out of print. Never mind: let’s try a public library. Eureka, it’s available at a few nearby. A second look, however, revealed that almost every copy in these libraries is marked as “lost.” Let’s try some of the other book stores on the web. Nothing there either.
At the end of this search, the only copy I could find was a used one for sale at eBay. For a mere $1500, I could have in my possession this fine piece of investigative journalism.
Turns out, other people have tried to find this book too, with little to no luck. However, after some investigation of my own, I found a friend who had made a photocopy of the only copy in the UC library system. Hallelujah. Only catch was, it halfway across the world in a trunk in his house in Pakistan.
I find it fascinating that someone can remove a published book so comprehensively from public access. Not just in India, but across most of the world (the publisher of the book, for example, is in Australia). Even if it turns out to be the worst book written, it has definitely piqued my curiosity.
Finally, after a few months of cajoling, I will get my hands on this photocopied copy, hopefully later this week. While I’m sure after all this hype the actual text will disappoint, I still look forward to reading the book.
A review will hopefully follow soon. Perhaps I should consider scanning the pages of this book and making it available online, copyrights be damned. I somehow doubt that the author would object.
The yuppie union card August 5, 2007
Posted by abheek in b-school, personal.1 comment so far
I’ve been getting a lot of flak recently from friends about going for a business degree. Most of them fall into one of two distinct categories.
Firstly, there’s the engineers, who believe that a business education is less of an education and more of a ‘networking’ opportunity. While not unfounded, I can easily convince myself that these concerns are not entirely correct. Some of my friends have claimed to have had their greatest learning experience be the two years at business school, and I no longer believe that ‘networking’ is an entirely dirty word. There’s definitely a value proposition to the whole idea of an MBA, and while people differ on the extent of the value, I don’t believe it can be completely ignored.
The second, and more serious rebuttal, is an ideological one. The “yuppie union card,” as some people call it, would require me to conform to the types of thinking that a business environment is notorious for. “Oh yeah, we’ll see your opinions on this issue two years from now when you are a raging neo-con capitalist” seems to be something I hear more and more of these days.
While most of it is jest, there’s definitely a concern in my head about the amount of conformity required in such environments. Being an engineer, amongst other things, is often a very liberating experience. The professional environment is one of extreme meritocracy. While it can sometimes lead to an immured existence where people refuse to acknowledge the world around them, for the most part it’s also a professional experience that puts thought and understanding above perverted idealism. The rationalist in me loved it.
So will the MBA also bring about a difference in my way of thinking? As a friend put it yesterday, it is not education, but training that most such institutions provide. A training that, in some cases, simplifies the world into balance sheets and revenue figures, and is notorious for encouraging people to ignore things that cannot be modeled by these numbers. Is it possible for me to be a corporate suit and not compromise on some of my beliefs? Will I be assimilated, or will I resist? Perhaps I’m being paranoid, but only time will tell.
In the next few weeks, school will start, and I’ll start posting more details about the experience. Until then, I’ll drink to the optimist in me, and look forward to the start of two very exciting years.
