Adios ...

This has been a year of learning, discovering myself and India...

It has been a fun year from finance to innovation to entrepreneurship to M&A to Don Quixote to countless cases of Enron, Microsoft, Reliance ...

Adios life at IIMA. Adios the 2 in the morning group meeting and 4 in the morning assignments, bye bye ePlus and bye bye the kool restaurants of A'bad ..

Looking forward to the life ahead ...

I'm 99% certain to go back to US .. I'll be in my chosen field of finance and technology .. hoping to learn and use the learnings..

India is happening..

Some one will show the GDP, some one will show the stock market, but today I saw something that was a bit different. Udayn Mukherjee, the TV reporter was asking questions to Mr Kamalnath the commerce minister on CNBC TV 18, the confidence of Udyan showed me India is happening.

News is Govt. may be planning for export ban on cement. They already have a ban on Sugar export. It’s well within their right. Ofcourse the reason is good old inflation. Indian hunger is too much now a days and we may (my guess) not be producing enough cement to feed our own hunger for building/dams and roads.

It’s well known that Govt. is urging/ordering cement industry (in chanakya’s words sam/dam/danda/bhed) to keep the prices low as cement is one of the direct inflationary product. So far they have not been able to do so. Govt has tried other measures fiscal, monitory and supply side but inflation has not been tamed yet.

So last resort is to ban the exports. It sounds logical, but here is the catch the free market economist’s theory would say this is wrong. If this is how we protect markets/consumers are we ready to take on world. Ofcourse WTO does not have issue on such policy so it’s not illegal.

So is govt. right in doing so … time will tell and I don’t want to comment on it..

But watch the video …. (thanks Viral to point it out )..

http://www.indiaearnings.com/videos/videos.php?autono=270431

The way Udyan has been able to ask and manage questions to Mr. Kamlanath, one thing is for sure Indian youth is more confident to raise the questions.

Whos is right and wrong? Make your call ..

Is govt right? Wrong? Don’t use this issue in isolation?

M&A in technology services?

M&A activity in and out of India is on the rise. Business journals are predicting that Indian companies will be in action this year in the M&A seen. TATA Corus, Possible Vodafone-Hutch, Ranbaxy-Merck Generics and now an India conglomarte wanting to buy Novelis, the fingers in thew two hands are going to be limited to count o of mergers with for the first time ever.

Surprising India’s core offering sector has not seen a lot of action yet. Yes I’m talking about Technology services. This industry has not seen that much of action yet…

What’s going on? Don’t they have resources and/or will to buy-merge and consolidate, of course answer is NO that is not the case. Wipro has shown that. But nothing big is seen in this arena. What’s going on?

So what is it that’s stopping IBM to buy HCL or Infosys to go merge with EDS, CSC. It sounds like a naturalistic synergy in terms of client acquisition, skill acquisition and moving down or up the value chain.

While there are few buyouts EDS-Mphesis and Canbay buy out, there are reasons the less M&A is seen in this industry.

My hypothesis for the reasons …

1. cultural (people) integration issue
2. No tangible assets
3. people can leave and not be owned
4. low entry barrier to the industry (build / buy )
5. innovations driven industry
6. too many cash rich competitors may want same target (if not friendly) – prisoner’s dilemma

While these issues exists, they may not exist for long time. It may not be too long before we see action in India technology services industry.