Our Time Now....

Election results will be out on 16th may. Chances of UPA gaining majority with straitegic alliances are high. BJP may face trouble due to various reasons like projecting a less popular leader as PM, Not fulfillment of promises given in NDA era , etc.

Effect on Economy : If UPA or NDA will come to power , Sensex may move upwards in hope of a stable government. But if 3rd or 4th(!!!) front comes to power,then only God can save this country.

The good signs on indian economy are getting visible now due to increasing domestic demand. I think the obama's proposed tax on US companies which are offshoring the work will change the way indian IT companies are working. Now they will go to the last mile in INDIA itself for getting IT projects and they will come out of 5 star luxury of silicon velly. Lets hope for the best.

Jai Ho...

Slowdown SideEffect : Entrepreneurship Revolution

I believe that there are always two sides of a coin named Slowdown.

India has still not caught in "recession" . But the results of quarters of many companies are depressing. Their profits are in a dip. For ex.,Bajaj Auto has faced the heat severly,so it postponed its plan to aquire stake in Triumph motorcycles. Many companies have postponed plans for expanding and come out with an IPO. Employees have fear of getting pink slips and Students from even prremier educational institutes are facing a hard time in placements.

What will this lead to?......................

As a positive side, my analysis shows that this will start the "E-Revolution" in India.

E-Revolution means "Entrepreneurship Revolution".

Natioanl Entrepreneurship Network , The Indus Entreprenuers , Wadhwani Founadation , Proto.in etc are some organizations which are supporting this activity.

Even Economic Times has launched "ET Power of ideas "

IIT-bombay , Symbiosis , SDMIMD , etc institutes have already started the E-cells for developement of Entrepreneurship among the students.

I think this is the Rise of Young Indians. The era of working in a call centre has gone, it is not attracting the youth. India's youth in in exploration mode. The postive effect is visible....

Lets hope for the Best.

Japan to partner Vibrant Gujarat

 Gujarat’s biennial investment mela is truly going global. Breaking a seven-year jinx, Japan has become the first country to join hands with the state government for the Vibrant Gujarat Global Investors’ Summit to be held on January 12-13 next year. 

    Japan’s interest in Gujarat stems from the fact that nearly 40 per cent of the proposed Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC), which is being built with Japanese funding, falls in the state. 
    The Japanese External Trade Organisation (JETRO) will be leading a delegation of 40-odd industrialists and officials of the ministry of international trade and industry (MITI). “Among the top names that have agreed to be here are Mitsubishi, Nissan, Toyoto and Honda,” said a senior official. The proposal to make Japan a partner country was put forth before Japanese officials during managing director, GIDC, Maheshwar Sahu’s visit to Japan to canvass for Vibrant Gujarat. 
    Among the issues to be discussed will be ‘Mini Japan’, an exclusive city meant for the Japanese to be located between Dholera and Fedra, where an international merchant airport has been planned. Investment in the ports sector and creating a chain of godowns along the DMIC, especially in Dholera special investment region (SIR), will be on the agenda. 
    The United Kingdom was a partner country at the resurgent Gujarat partnership meet, which took place on February 8-9, 2002. But a few weeks later, the post-Godhra riots started and that kept foreign investors away from Gujarat.

Optimism, the power within..........

• There are a number of factors that would allow the economy to ride out the storm 

• The Indian economy is far more insulated from the global crisis than the mood around would lead us to believe

• But for that factors to gel together and produce growth, we need politics. Strong, imaginative leadership is what we need.

    WINTER can get gloomy in Delhi — fog and clouds block out the sun, people are sapped of energy and the mood turns less than cheerful. This kind of a winter has the Indian economy in its grip. Policymaking is clouded, inertia is more visible than action on the ground and the mood is far darker than it ought to be. But there is a way out. And that is politics. 
    Bad news is pouring out of the rest of the world. Models of regulatory rectitude and institutional integrity suddenly turn out to be plain hubris, if not actual Ponzi schemes. The three biggest economies of the world are in full-blown recession. Interest rates there are fast approaching the fashion industry’s dimensional ideal — size zero. Yet, economic activity remains stuck. People prefer to sit on cash rather than spend or invest their funds. 
    Thanks to this, and the fact that we, in our collective wisdom, have prevented the bulk of our long term savings from being deployed in equities, the Indian stock market remains hostage to global recessionary impulses. Instead of reflecting India’s economic fundamentals, our stock market indices reflect global pessimism. This adds to the sense of crisis and crisis-inducing paralysis. The reality is that there are several grounds for optimism. 
    Number one: the Indian economy depends far less on exports than other fast growing economies do. If the export market dries up, an export-dependent economy would face crisis. While India’s exports of goods and services together add up to a little under a quarter of the total output, the direct export contribution to gross profits and wages and salaries is less than 10% — substantial, but not huge. The indirect contribution would be significant, particularly in the case of high value exports like software and IT-enabled services. But these segments are likely to grow, rather than decelerate, as companies in the recession-hit large economies seek to cut costs through outsourcing. The bulk of the demand for India’s output comes from India itself. Consumption demand is about two-thirds of the output. 
    Ground No. two: In aggregate terms, the bulk of Indian investment is financed out of domestic savings. The current account deficit is the measure of dependence on external savings for local investment, and this is about 2% of GDP. 
    The third ground for optimism: All costs are coming down (save, strangely, of newsprint!). Oil prices are less than one-third their peak. Globally, food prices are down a fifth, metals are down by half and the Economist’s index for all commodities is down by a third. Freight costs are a fraction of what they used to be. 
    Of course, metal and commodity producers would not call this good news. But India, on the whole, is a net importer of commodities and not a net exporter of commodities. For every steel producer fretting over falling steel prices, for example, thousands of steel users would be cheering cheaper steel. This fall in global commodity prices also gives elbowroom to the central bank and the central government to pursue expansionary policies without fear of runaway inflation. 
    Infrastructure is both crisis and opportunity for the Indian economy. Its dearth constrains growth. But that crippling paucity also means that a concerted government drive to build infrastructure would not end up creating an excess of it. Rather, the process of building infrastructure would provide the boost the economy needs, and the created infrastructure would support further growth. 
    If all this were so simple, why isn’t growth happening on its own? Just because all the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle are around, the puzzle doesn’t automatically get solved. Someone has to put those pieces together the right way. In the case of a slowing economy, what can put the pieces of the puzzle together is politics. 
    The government has been spending its energies on sectoral sops — interest rates for cars or housing or exports. This is wasted energy. All focus must be on spending, preferably on building infrastructure. And this cannot be done without strong political will and imagination. 
    When people sit on cash, largescale public expenditure alone can get things moving — this is classical Keynesian economics. The government must borrow at the cheap rates available to it abroad and spend on infrastructure in India: roads, towns, dams, irrigation canals and watershed development. 
    Getting the bureaucracy to move and spend money is tough — there is too much of lethargy, procedural inertia and plain corruption in the system. Political will alone can energise the system and make it deliver. 
    All land-intensive projects languish because of political failure to create a framework for converting those who lose land to projects into its stakeholders. Nandigram, Singur and Posco are epitaphs to technocratic activism devoid of enabling, empowering politics. Firm resolve to clamp down on power theft alone can sustain investment in the power sector. 
    If winter comes, can spring be far behind? When it comes to economics, you need politics, besides poetry.

Kris Gopalakrishnan : IT industry to recover by Q2 2009

  

 THE Indian IT services industry could see a recovery during the last three months of 2009 or early 2010, according to S Gopalakrishnan, chief executive officer of Infosys, which is India’s second biggest software firm. 

    Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the ongoing TiE summit, Mr Gopalakrishnan said that current slowdown in the global economy “has only seen a dip in the business volumes of the IT industry.” 
    The prospects of the industry look bright as there are numerous opportunities, with offshoring being a credible strategy, he added. 
    Earlier participating in a discussion, the Infosys chief executive said that despite the slowdown, the industry will benefit from such conditions, as demonstrated during past recessions. 
    Providing statistics, he said the global technology industry is estimated at around $800 billion and “India’s share is only 5% giving it enough room for growth.” 
   

Microsoft succour for Indian start-ups

THE world’s biggest software company, Microsoft, will help Indian start-up companies cope with the economic recession by offering them Microsoft software needed to run their business free of cost. 
    Termed as BizSpark and coming under the Microsoft Startup accelerator Program, this new initiative will provide the startups with software products free for a period of three years. 
    “IT industry is going through a inflection point and there are a host of startups who are looking at tapping into domestic market through the creation of Ips. Their initiative would be to provide the entire tech support,” said Ravi Venkatesan, chairman of Microsoft India. In order to become a member of this program, the start-up companies will have to be less than three years old, and their annual revenues should not exceed $1 million.

C.K.Prahlad urges Entrepreneurs to Explore domestic opportunities

MANAGEMENT guru CK Prahalad on Tuesday asked Indian entrepreneurs to seek domestic opportunities for serving around 400 million people living below the poverty line. There is a need to focus on creating wealth rather than sharing wealth,” he said during his keynote address at the TiE summit in Bangalore on Tuesday. “The poor represent an opportunity, a source for innovation,” he said. 
    Giving example of the upcoming Indian elections, Prahalad said that no country in the world has done 100% electronic polling, and India is attempting to do just that with around 1.5 million electronic polling booths. “It’s a great innovation to be able to leapfrog the west,” he said. 
    Referring to the Indian phone firms such as Bharti Airtel, who are able to serve millions of subscribers at rates much lower than the US, and still remain more profitable than their western counterparts, Prahalad said that these phone firms have demonstrated how a company can be so profitable despite serving customers who are basically poor. 
    Among other opportunities for the Indian entrepreneurs to pursue, Prahalad also mentioned how locally manufactured access devices can trigger a revolution.