Year: 2007

Structuring is like making bhel puri. You buy the vegetables, peanuts, chutneys and all other ingredients. You don’t bother into their formulation and all. You just put all of it together in proper proportions so that the customer likes the end result. and get paid for that!

Update: Some responses from my investment banker friends.

The guy from Goldman simply agrees.

The guy from Deutsche says

NO
its fooling the customer and making sure you get sued

The girl from Lehman says

no it isnt

its like making cake

you get a tonne of ingredients – get the basic batter

then bake it

then start embellishing

different bits differently

and then cut up slices so that everyone thinks they got the best slice at the bets rate 😉

The guy from Lehman is yet to respond.

Update

The guy from Lehman responded. He says

it’s pretty hard to sell products to be honest..? and customers shop around so they always go for the best bhel puri… wall street is like? row of stalls at shanti kunj.. 😛

I haven’t done it for a while now. So while I’m at it, let me break away from the usual TV ads and focus on voice ads for a change. Driving to office every morning, listening to ad-infested Radio City in order to catch the wonderful Vasanthi’s wonderful voice gives me an opportunity to listen to a lot of them.

The most jarring of them all is this ad by Puravankara. They have made a song in hindi which has a bad tune and bad lyrics with stuff like “mila hai mujheeeeeeeeeeee, purva mein gharrrrrrrrr” and stuff. If only I knew exactly how long the ad would last, I’d put the radio on mute for that much time. Sometimes it completely takes the joy out of listening to Vasanthi!

Then, there are these welfare ads put by the ministry of family welfare I think, which are absolutely hilarious. Some of them deal with cleanliness at roadside eateries, while others say that you can’t play with hens! And they have a number of versions of these ads, all of which provide for a good chuckle. Of course, there are also the “eye ads”. There is a song in kannada about glaucoma, which is sung in the form of a duet! One wonders why the ministry wastes valuable resources putting these ads in the mostly upmarket radio city. Wouldn’t its objective be better served if it were to be put on more junta channels such as Big or SunFM?

Then, of course, there are these TV ads from which the voice is removed and the ad played on radio. Most of these again turn out to be extremely irritating, for I think it’s mostly visual impact. There is this salt ad, which is in Hindi, which is perfectly fine for Radio City.

Today I found a new set of ads – for UTI Bank, which has just changed his name to Axis bank. They take examples of how Rajiv Bhatia became Akshay Kumar, and Shivaji Rao became Rajnikanth, and how nothing much changed. And that UTI Bank is like that! Coming to think of it, whoever had heard of Rajiv Bhatia? Or of Shivaji Rao (except for commuters on route 10A)? Is UTI Bank admitting that they’ve not been a good bank so far?

I’ve noticed one other thing with radio ads – initially they are all mostly in Hindi, including on the Kannada channels. After a while, though, they re-make the ad in Kannada, and put it in Kannada on all channels! Interesting stuff. The latest to do this has been Indian Oil, which has released it’s extremely irritating “ah aaah pucho pucho” ad in Kannada.

When I was a kid, we used to without fail celebrate my birthday on the 6th of December, and my father’s birthday on the 30th of the same month. However, never once did we celebrate my mother’s birthday. Repeated questions in this matter went unanswered for a long time, and I grew up wondering how amma couldn’t have a birthday!

Later, I figured out that the problem is not that my mom doesn’t have a birthday – it’s that she has several! When she was a kid, my grandfather wanted to admit her in school a year earlier, so a false date given to enable that (those days people didn’t care too much for birth certificates). Later, when she took up employment, she realized that she would have to retire a couple of years earlier because of this birthday. So she got herself a new birth date, a couple of years later.

Then, for some other reasons, she wanted to become younger, and got yet another certificate. And so forth. The title of this post may be an exaggeration, but I know that my mom uses at least four or five different dates of birth! And with my maternal grandparents both gone, and my two doddammas being of the forgetful variety, no one really knows when my mom was actually born!

So now, this causes immense confusion, and at times it’s quite funny trying to guess what my mom’s age with respect to this particular document is. At other times, it’s not so funny. There will be documents which will have to be produced together, but then suddenly we figure out that they have different dates of birth mentioned on them. And there is some extra effort we have to put in order to correct this inaccuracy.

Now, I just assume that my mom’s age is a quantum state. A random number. And I’ve been asked to wish her every year on 27th of January. Of course, none of the documents show this as her actual birthday!

In order to comply with the Right to Information Act (one of the very few pieces of good legislation by the current UPA government), IIMB has disclosed the “formula” used in this year’s admission process. For someone who went through the process three years back, it makes extremely interesting reading. Once again, I’m not in the mood for “writing”, so I’ll use bullet points.

• For a start, i never imagined that the formula would be so “complex”. If you look at the extent of mathematical computation involved, perhaps the only formula that that is more complicated than this would be Duckworth-Lewis!
• It is interesting to see how much your “history” matters. I didn’t imagine my 10th and 12th board marks would matter for so long. Thank goodness my 69 in 12 Board English didn’t have too much of an adverse impact!
• On a related note, it might explain why you don’t find that many gults, or people from factory towns such as Kota for that matter, at IIM. The fact that many of them totally ignore their 12th boards in favor of the JEE may perhaps be coming back to haunt them a few years down the line. This is just a conjecture, and there is a good chance i’m wrong on this count.
• Contrary to what a lot of people think, the place where you do your undergrad doesn’t seem to have any impact on your prospects of getting in. It doesn’t matter whether you do your undergrad from Indian Institute of Technology or (the now derecognized) Islamia Institute of Technology!
• On one hand, this gives a good opportunity to those who had missed out in their JEE or similar exams to “get back”. Also, one thing you will notice is that historically the percentage of IITians at IIMB is significantly lower than that at IIMA or IIMC. Maybe, now that fits in!
• The group discussion in itself has as little as a 7.5% weightage, which is heartening. In my opinion, group discussion is one of the worst selection tools. The equal weight given to the GD summary also offers a ray of hope to people who are not aggressive, or those who get stuck in a GD panel full of aggressive people.
• It is now clear that the “most preferred” work experience is about three years. So if you have tried four times for CAT and not gotten through, you might do well to look for alternate alternatives.
• Again contrary to popular perception, there doesn’t seem to be much weight for extra curricular activities, and leadership. Unless of course, they have an impact on your performance in the interviews. And they will probably improve your chances of a shortlist in placements if you do make it to IIM
• Then, it is interesting that the weight given to CAT in the final analysis is about 20%. In our batch (IIMB 2004-06), it seemed like the weightage for CAT was higher. Practically half my batch had a percentile in excess of 99.8. And we could see in our junior batch that this number had come down.
• The table with cutoffs for each category makes for interesting viewing. That the cutoffs for SC/ST/disabled is much lower than that for the general category comes as no surprise. It would be interesting, however, to know the difference in final cutoffs for people who get in “normally” through SC/ST and those who get in to the prep course. I have reasons to believe it is going to be significant.
• Much has been made out of the fact that the OBC cutoff is not too different from that for general. For example, Rashmi Bansal of JAM says , “It’s heartening to know the OBC cut offs were pegged very close to General cut offs“. However, I believe it’s more to do with demand and supply. Had the reservations been implemented this academic year, the proposed quota for OBCs was 7%, and this low “supply of seats” pushed up the cutoffs. If 27% is to be reserved for OBCs, I’m sure the cutoffs would be much lower, not too much more than that for SC/STs.

Do read the document, it makes for some interesting reading. And if you find anything else interesting, do let me and the other readers of this blog know.

I wait and wait for the weekend, and when it arrives, what do I do? First thing I do when I reach home on Friday night is to check my work email! And I do it again as soon as I wake up on Saturday, just in case one of the people in the head office in the US has sent some mail. Not that I bother to respond to any of it, and I have absolutely no plans of working over the weekend.

But I do it, check mail every friday night, and saturday morning. And some sundays also. Almost compulsively. And if there’s something in it which says I have a lot of work on Monday, I start getting worried.

Warrasht.??

The Gabriel Heinze drama is reaching dramatic proportions, with Man U refusing to sell him to LIverpool (or any other EPL club for that matter) despite the latter meeting the asking price. And it seems like Heinze wants to move at any cost – it seems he has engaged LIverpool’s legal team to assist him.

I don’t know how it will work legally, but Heinze might do well to learn from the guy who plays immediately to his right in the national team – Roberto Ayala. Last month, Ayala moved from Valencia to Villareal, only to move on to Zaragoza within a matter of days, without playing a single game for Villareal.

It seems like LIverpool desperately want Heinze, and are willing to up their bid. In which case, can’t they find a “surrogate intermediate club” for Heinze? Maybe some impoverished spanish or italian club might take up the offer. They buy Heinze from Man U for GBP 6.8 million (the asking price) and then quickly sell him to Liverpool for say 9 million, thus making a cool 2 million odd GBP profit! The money thus gained would be extremely useful to them while Liverpool will also get what they want. And if done efficiently, Man U will also be willing to sell Heinze to this impoverished club since it’s not in England and they are meeting the ask price!

On a related note, Liverpool bought Craig Bellamy last season for GBP 6 million from Blackburn, and now they have sold him to WHU for GBP 7.5 million. Do they have to pay capital gains tax on Bellamy?

In the classic 1988 Kannada movie Avale Nanna Hendathi, there is a character who has three wives. The first wife convinces the guest that he should have coffee. The second wife makes the coffee. And the third brings the coffee for the guest.

Isn’t this exactly the way IT companies work?

This interview with A B Bardhan, the General Secretary of the CPI published in yesterday’s Business Standard is nothing short a masterpiece. The entire interview is a work of art, and deserves to be framed. However, even in such a galaxy, some lines deserve a special mention.

When asked why the left has little influence in the cow belt, Bardhan says:

The reasons for our failure in the Hindi heartland are the continuing hold of feudalists, traditionalists and obscurantists in our society.

He even admits that states such as West Bengal and Kerala are “peripheral” (and i’m not sure he meant that in a geographical sense) and has more reasons to offer about the non-performance in the heartland.

In peripheral states like West Bengal and Kerala, we have had the advantage of great social movements but in the Hindi heartland, in spite of philosophers like Kabir being from there, things haven?t changed much.

What takes the cake, however, is Bardhan’s stand on FDI

The Left supports FDI as this way at least some part of the billions that were looted from India in colonial era can come back.

On reforms

We will not allow the issue of hunger and poverty to be relegated to the background while pursuing growth. Reforms will have to touch the last man in this country. Today?s reforms are only producing millionaires and billionaires, and even trillionaires.

You should read the full thing for maximum pleasure. Hats off to Aasha Khosla of the Business Standard for enabling this masterpiece!

Sometimes I feel like I want a break. That I want to take a few days off, even unpaid leave will do. And roam. I want to generally roam the forests of the western ghats. Go by bus. Start off at some famous place. Take a bus to some arbit place and get off. Walk for a while. Take pics. Talk to people. Make notes. Make sure I stay clear of naxalites. Move on.

Only problem is that it’s monsoon now? so I can’t immediately execute on this. And I can’t execute on this for pretty much the next three months. The last time I had got such ideas was last August, when I was on a break between jobs. Again, there was the monsoon issue. Add to that the uncertainty that was in my life then. And the fact that once i’d successfully interviewed with my current employer, I didn’t get much time.

Why does it always have to happen in the monsoon? Why don’t I get this kind of feeling in say winter, when it can be easily executed? Worresht.

Cricinfo says:

Both James Anderson and Chris Tremlett are in which means there won’t be a Lord’s debut for Stuart Broad. A little unlucky, after his 5 for 76 for England Lions against the Indians at Chelmsford. It is Tremlett’s Test debut though.

I think the reason Tremlett has been preferred to Broad (despite the latter’s recent string of strong performances is that… he bats right-handed! Yes, i know that both of them are right arm fast bowlers but Broad’s selection would have resulted in an all-left-handed English Tail.

The English think tank knows fully well that India’s weakness is in its failure to get out the tail, and hence some left-right combination there should definitely help! Bowling abilities don’t matter I guess.