Rudy Giuliani on leadership .. Video from CSPAN

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Walmart ready to enter india?

It looks like they are... WSJ is reporting that they will partner with Bharti a cellphone giant who own BPL, idea and airtel...

About three months ago, I had a debate with a friend at IIMA that walmart will enter India with a partnership model. At that time i had considered Bharti as a contender for the partner i guess i was right. The other option i thought walmart could enter India with a franchisee model.

The mode of entry was also the way i had thought they would do ...
do all the back end stuff and let the partner do the front end ...

The reason is India's FDI policy, it allows only FDI in retail that sells it's own brand such as Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Sony. But policy does not allow FDI in retail where it's a multi brand store.

official reason for such as policy
it'll jeopardize the interest of small vendors...

But rumors are that it's lobbying by Biyani and the retail group who wants to get as "tagda" as possible before the inevitable happens.

So inevitable is about to happen ...

Reliance v/s Bharti-Walmart v/s Biyani v/s Star bazaar (Tata)

I'm surprised that Tata is not doing anything in this area .. who know what's cooking there ?

link to article on WSJ

A consultant ..

please click on it ..

Entrepreneurship lessons from Sanjeev Bhikhchandani

I see a note in today’s media "Info edge listed at Stock exchange". Info edge aka naukri.com is a company founded by IIMA alumni Sanjeev B. I thought it may be a good time to recollect his knowledge sharing on entrepreneurship with us. The market os cheering his success and some would envy him to be in a billion Rs. club, but not everyone knows the story behind the success.

About 3 months ago when we had a case from Naukri.com I had requested prof. Sahay to ask if we could invite Sanjeev to our class. And to my/our luck he did come on short notice. Since he was coming, I requested him if he could also share lessons of his way of looking entrepreneurship.

Some of the key takeaway were

1. keep trying, success never comes easy and it’s never ever quick
2. use your experience to your advantage
3. Perseverance pays
4. Nothing wrong in being opportunist at times
5. Do the math … V IMP…
6. you can not sail in two boats …

The Freemium Business Model

“Give your service away for free, possibly ad supported but maybe not, acquire a lot of customers very efficiently through word of mouth, referral networks, organic search marketing, etc, then offer premium priced value added services or an enhanced version of your service to your customer base.”

- Jarid Lukin

The billionaire next door?

The billionaire next door? How?Can a billionaire be living next door? But Warren buffet is one! He lives in Omaha Nebraska for bout 45 years. He had bought the house that he lives in for 31.5K and he is happy. Upon asked by CNBC reporter why not move to mansion. His answer was “I’m happy with all I have got”. This is the answer he mentioned about 20 times in last one hours “a day with WB” a CNBC show.

Yes I came home early for the show. Luckily, traffic has not been bad and I was here in 15 minutes. So the time well spent. An hour of time watching who is WB? What’s WB’s philosophy and what’s his success secret.

University of Missouri actually teaches “WB way of investing”. They recommend book called essays for WB Larry Cunningham. Ashwath Damodaran in NYU – a professor in valuation – say his success is in his staying back in Omaha and not having wall street influence. Upon asking do you not hire Wall street host shots for due diligence? He answered “are they hot shosts?” and he added “he bought a company in Israel with out being there just on meeting that man.

Rule # 1 don’t loose the money, #2 don’t forget the rule #1., #3 do what you know? And don’t do you what you don’t. That’s what he describes his success.

link to his interview snippet

At a Tie event in Bay area

Yesterday night I went to an event organized by Tie. Tie, the Indus entrepreneur, network is a volunteer organization with 44 chapters across the globe. The focus was on security industry and how an entry to exit. “Software Security Entry to Exit - Decode the entrepreneurial code”.

The event was structured in three parts 1. networking 2. panel discussions and 3. Q&A. It was fun meeting folks at the networking, ofcourse some of the folks were really snobbish and some were just too good. I met few people one British embassy associate wanting to invite companies to setup offices in UK, A Chinese lady wanting to find clients, An American executive wanting to grow his company, an India sales manager hanging out, few entrepreneurs wanting to find opportunity and of course few vellas like me who just came to find whats happening.

Dinner was aweful, after eating food in India for six or so months, I don’t think I can eat India food anywhere in North America. It just does not compare in quality forget the cost. I’m side tracking …

So the panel started the discussion. Rob Owens, Vice President and Senior Research Analyst, Pacific Crest, was the moderator. He was the first one on the street to make the security as a group, an industry and cover it differently in 1997. Since than, he has covered the industry and considered an authority. The panel was Don canning, a sr. fellow from Microsoft’s emerging business team, Ashsih Chandna from greylock partners, Stephnie Fohn, CEO whitehat securities – a managed outsourcing company and Praveen jain EVP Mcafee.

Some of the key points from discussions were
 The industry is not saturated in terms of $$ the expected size is $120 billion and current industry size is $20 billion
 The industry does not have many big players
 The industry has seen few segments mature that are firewall and anti-virus.
 The industry does not have common standards and in the game theatric situation of not having one specially every one having MS and CISCO big brother in bed together
 The industry has not seen an ipo in last five years but trend may change with ipo for 3 to 5 players
 Mr. Praveen’s opinion was that the smaller company should not stay small, they should merge (hostile nature of big boys).

Question answers were boaring for me hence I came back.. Overall time well spent than watching TV/documentary 