Who is Real Hero

Management Views from IIM, Bangalore. by Prof. Y.L.R. Moorthy


Who sells the largest number of cameras in India?

Your guess is likely to be Sony, Canon or Nikon.
The correct answer is none of the above. The winner is 'Nokia' whose
main line of business in India is not cameras but cell phones.

Reason being cameras bundled with cellphones are outselling stand alone
cameras. Now, what prevents the cellphone from replacing the camera
outright? Nothing at all.

One can only hope the Sonys and Canons are taking note.

Try this. Who is the biggest in music business in India? You think it is HMV
Sa-Re-Ga-Ma?

Sorry....the answer is Airtel. By selling caller tunes (that playfor 30 seconds)
Airtel makes more than what music companies make by selling music
albums (that run for hours).

Incidentally Airtel is not in music business. It is the mobile service
provider with the largest subscriber base in India. That sort of competitor
is difficult to detect, even more difficult to beat (by the time you have
identified him he has already gone past you). But if you imagine that Nokia
and Bharti (Airtel's parent) are breathing easy you can't be farther from
truth.

Nokia confessed that they all but missed the smartphone bus. They admit
that Apple's Iphone and Google's Android can make life difficult in future.
But you never thought Google was a mobile company, did you?

If these illustrations mean anything, there is a bigger game unfolding. It is not
so much about mobile or music or camera or emails.

The "Mahabharat" (the great Indian epic battle) is about "what is tomorrow's
personal digital device"? Will it be a souped up mobile or a palmtop with a
telephone? All these are little wars that add up to that big battle. Hiding
behind all these wars is a gem of a question – "who is my competitor?"

Once in a while, to intrigue my students I toss a question at them. It says
"What Apple did to Sony, Sony did to Kodak, explain?" The smart ones get the
answer almost immediately. Sony defined its market as audio (music from the
walkman). They never expected an IT company like Apple to encroach into
their audio domain. Come to think of it, is it really surprising? Apple as a
computer maker has both audio and video capabilities. So what made Sony
think he won't compete on pure audio? "Elementary Watson". So also Kodak
defined its business as film cameras, Sony defines its businesses as
"digital."

In digital camera the two markets perfectly meshed. Kodak was torn between
going digital and sacrificing money on camera film or staying with films and
getting left behind in digital technology. Left undecided it lost in both.
It had to. It did not ask the question "who is my competitor for tomorrow?"
The same was true for IBM whose mainframe revenue prevented it from
seeing the PC. The same was true of Bill Gates who declared "internet is a fad!"
and then turned around to bundle the browser with windows to bury Netscape.
The point is not who is today's competitor. Today's competitor is obvious.
Tomorrow's is not.

In 2008, who was the toughest competitor to British Airways in India?
Singapore airlines? Better still, Indian airlines? Maybe, but there are
better answers. There are competitors that can hurt all these airlines and
others not mentioned. The answer is videoconferencing and telepresence
services of HP and Cisco. Travel dropped due to recession. Senior IT
executives in India and abroad were compelled by their head quarters to
use videoconferencing to shrink travel budget. So much so, that the mad
scramble for American visas from Indian techies was nowhere in sight
in 2008. (Indiahas a quota of something like 65,000 visas to the U.S. They
were going a-begging. Blame it on recession!). So far so good. But to think
that the airlines will be back in business post recession is something I would not
bet on. In short term yes. In long term a resounding no.

Remember, if there is one place where Newton's law of gravity is applicable
besides physics it is in electronic hardware. Between 1977 and 1991 the prices
of the now dead VCR (parent of Blue-Ray disc player) crashed to one-third of its
original level in India. PC's price dropped from hundreds of thousands of rupees
to tens of thousands. If this trend repeats then telepresence prices will also crash.
Imagine the fate of airlines then. As it is not many are makingmoney. Then it will
surely be RIP!

India has two passions. Films and cricket. The two markets were distinctly
different. So were the icons. The cricket gods were Sachin and Sehwag. The
filmi gods were the Khans (Aamir Khan, Shah Rukh Khan and the other Khans
who followed suit). That was, when cricket was fundamentally test cricket or
at best 50 over cricket.

Then came IPL and the two markets collapsed intoone. IPL brought cricket
down to 20 overs. Suddenly an IPL match was reducedto the length of a 3 hour
movie. Cricket became film's competitor. On theeve of IPL matches movie halls
ran empty. Desperate multiplex ownersrequisitioned the rights for screening IPL
matches at movie halls to hang on to the audience. If IPL were to become the
mainstay of cricket, as it is likely to be, films have to sequence their releases so
as not clash with IPL matches. As far as the audience is concerned both are what
in India are called 3 hour "tamasha" (entertainment). Cricket season might push
films out of the market.

Look at the products that vanished from India in the last 20 years. When did
you last see a black and white movie? When did you last use a fountain pen?
When did you last type on a typewriter? The answer for all the above is "I
don't remember!" For some time there was a mild substitute for the
typewriter called electronic typewriter that had limited memory. Then came
the computer and mowed them all. Today most technologically challenged guys
like me use the computer as an upgraded typewriter. Typewriters per se are
nowhere to be seen.

One last illustration. 20 years back what were Indians using to wake them up
in the morning? The answer is "alarm clock." The alarm clock was a monster
made of mechanical springs. It had to be physically keyed every day to keep
it running. It made so much noise by way of alarm, that it woke you up and
the rest of the colony. Then came quartz clocks which were sleeker. They
were much more gentle though still quaintly called "alarms." What do we use
today for waking up in the morning? Cellphone! An entire industry of clocks
disappeared without warning thanks to cell phones. Big watch companies like
Titan were the losers. You never know in which bush your competitor is hiding!

On a lighter vein, who are the competitors for authors? Joke spewing
machines? (Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple, himself a Pole, tagged a
Polish joke telling machine to a telephone much to the mirth of Silicon
Valley). Or will the competition be story telling robots? Future is scary!

The boss of an IT company once said something interesting about the animal
called competition. He said "Have breakfast …or…. be breakfast"! That sums
it up rather neatly.



Y. L. R. Moorthi is a professor at the Indian Institute of Management
Bangalore. He is an M.Tech from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras and a
post graduate in management from IIM, Bangalore.
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DIFFICULT QUESTIONS AND INTELLIGENT ANSWERS!


Question and the Answer given by Candidates ohh sorry, most of them are IAS Officers now.
Q.How can you drop a raw egg onto a concrete floor without cracking it?
A.Concrete floors are very hard to crack! (UPSC Topper)

Q.If it took eight men ten hours to build a wall, how long would it take four men to build it?
A. No time at all it is already built. (UPSC 23 Rank Opted for IFS)

Q.If you had three apples and four oranges in one hand and four apples and three oranges in the other hand, what would you have?
A. Very large hands.(Good one) (UPSC 11 Rank Opted for IPS)

Q.. How can you lift an elephant with one hand?
A. It is not a problem, since you will never find! an elephant with one hand. (UPSC Rank 14 Opted for IES)

Q. How can a man go eight days without sleep?
A. No Probs , He sleeps at night. (UPSC IAS Rank 98)

Q. If you throw a red stone into the blue sea what it will become?
A. It will Wet or Sink as simple as that. (UPSC IAS Rank 2)

Q. What looks like half apple ?
A : The other half. (UPSC - IAS Topper )

Q. What can you never eat for breakfast ?
A : Dinner.

Q. What happened when wheel was invented ?
A : It caused a revolution.

Q.. Bay of Bengal is in which state?
A : Liquid (UPSC 33Rank )

Q. How many buckets of water does Pacific Ocean contains?
A : It depends on the size of the bucket. (CA Institute Campus Interview Placement)

Interviewer said 'I shall either ask you ten easy questions or one really difficult question. Think well before you make up your mind!' The boy thought for a while and said, 'my choice is one really difficult question.'
'Well, good luck to you, you have made your own choice! Now tell me this. 'What comes first, Day or Night?'
The boy was jolted into reality as his admission depends on his answer, but he thought for a while and said, 'It's the DAY sir!'
'How' the interviewer asked,
'Sorry sir, you promised me that you will not ask me a SECOND difficult question!'
He was selected for IIM!



"Dont ever be angry on your friends..Bcz at the last moments of our life, we remember not the words of our enemies... but the silence of our F.R.I.E.N.D.. S."

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Some known & unknown facts


MOPED is the short term for 'Motorized Pedaling'.

POP MUSIC is 'Popular Music' shortened.

BUS is the short term for 'Omnibus' that means everybody.

FORTNIGHT comes from 'Fourteen Nights' (Two Weeks).

DRAWING ROOM was actually a 'withdrawing room' where people withdrew after
Dinner. Later the
prefix 'with' was dropped..

NEWS refers to information from Four directions N, E, W and S..

AG-MARK, which some products bear, stems from 'Agricultural Marketing'.

JOURNAL is a diary that tells about 'Journey for a day' during each Day's
business.

QUEUE comes from 'Queen's Quest'. Long back a long row of people as waiting
to see the Queen. Someone made the comment Queen's Quest..

TIPS come from 'To Insure Prompt Service'. In olden days to get Prompt
service from servants in an inn, travelers used to drop coins in a Box on
which was written 'To Insure Prompt Service'. This gave rise to the custom
of Tips.

JEEP is a vehicle with unique Gear system. It was invented during World War
II (1939-1945). It was named 'General Purpose Vehicle (GP)'.GP was changed
into JEEP later.

Interesting Facts * Coca-Cola was originally green.
* The most common name in the world is Mohammed..
* The name of all the continents end with the same letter that they start
with.
* The strongest muscle in the body is the tongue.

* TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters only on
one row ! of the keyboard.

* Women blink nearly twice as much as men!!

* You can't kill yourself by holding your breath.

* It is impossible to lick your elbow.

* People say "Bless you" when you sneeze because when you sneeze, your
heart stops for a millisecond.

* It is physically impossible for pigs to look up into the sky.

* The "sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick" is said to be the toughest
tongue twister in the English language. * If you sneeze too hard, you can
fracture a rib. If you try to suppress a sneeze, you can rupture a blood
vessel in your head or neck and die.

* Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from
history.
Spades - King David
Clubs - Alexander the Great,
Hearts - Charlemagne
Diamonds - Julius Caesar.

* If a statue of a person in the park on a horse has both front legs in the
air, the person died in battle.
* If the horse has one front leg in the air, the person died as a result of
wounds received in battle
* If the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural
causes.

* What do bullet proof vests, fire escapes, windshield wipers and laser
printers all have in common?
Ans. - All invented by women.

* A crocodile cannot stick its tongue out.

* A snail can sleep for three years.

* All polar bears are left handed.

* Butterflies taste with their feet.

* Elephants are the only animals that can't jump.

* In the last 4000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.

* On average, people fear spiders more than they do death.

* Shakespeare invented the word 'assassination' and 'bump'.

* Stewardesses is the longest word typed with only the left hand.

* The ant always falls over on its right side when intoxicated.

* The electric chair was invented by a dentist.

* The human heart creates enough pressure when it pumps out to the body to
squirt blood 30 feet.

* Rats multiply so quickly that in 18 months, two rats could have over
million descendants.

* Wearing headphones for just an hour will increase the bacteria in your
ear by 700 times.

* The cigarette lighter was invented before the match.

* Most lipstick contains fish scales.

* Like fingerprints, everyone's tongue print is different
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Confidence !

The business executive was deep in debt and could see no way out.

Creditors were closing in on him. Suppliers were demanding payment. He sat on the park bench, head in hands, wondering if anything could save his company from bankruptcy.

Suddenly an old man appeared before him. "I can see that something is troubling you," he said.


After listening to the executive's woes, the old man said, "I believe I can help you."

He asked the man his name, wrote out a check, and pushed it into his hand saying, "Take this money. Meet me here exactly one year from today, and you can pay me back at that time."

Then he turned and disappeared as quickly as he had come.

The business executive saw in his hand a check for $500,000, signed by John D. Rockefeller, then one of the richest men in the world!

"I can erase my money worries in an instant!" he realized. But instead, the executive decided to put the uncashed check in his safe. Just knowing it was there might give him the strength to work out a way to save his business, he thought.

With renewed optimism, he negotiated better deals and extended terms of payment. He closed several big sales. Within a few months, he was out of debt and making money once again.

Exactly one year later, he returned to the park with the uncashed check. At the agreed-upon time, the old man appeared. But just as the executive was about to hand back the check and share his success story, a nurse came running up and grabbed the old man.

"I'm so glad I caught him!" she cried. "I hope he hasn't been bothering you. He's always escaping from the rest home and telling people he's John D. Rockefeller."


And she led the old man away by the arm.


The astonished executive just stood there, stunned. All year long he'd been wheeling and dealing, buying and selling, c onvinced he had half a million dollars behind him.

Suddenly, he realized that it wasn't the money, real or imagined, that had turned his life around. It was his newfound self-confidence that gave him the power to achieve anything he went after.