First blog

The penchant for writing was always there, but never thought I would write a blog until I saw an article in the Sunday times which claimed IBM would surpass Infosys and TCS as the No. 1 IT company of India. I had predicted with my own analysis and had written an article about the same a few days before I read this article and my reaction was ….Hell! Even I had stated this though had not circulated my article in a Sunday daily or even amongst most of my friends. (What you do in this world is of no consequence, its wht you mke others feel you have done is what counts, so true, aint it)So my first blog starts with this very article, which though not well edited seems a good start. So here it goes



I have always been the one to crib about standard practices and theories. So this is a further addition to it. Not that I feel you should challenge it for the heck of it. But these practices get formed because they were a success somewhere, but its not necessary that these practices will get successfully replicated anywhere else.

I always feel that an organization should grow horizontally,move into different sectors once they have kind of established themselves in one sector. I sometimes don’t agree to the conventional thought of sticking to your core sector. According to me every organization has to venture into different sectors if it has the wherewithal and the capital.

For example, a bank has to move into the transport sector, because its big revenue business which only banks can afford since they can call the shots and bring consolidation. No bank has tried this anywhere in the world which surprises me. They start and end with tinkering of financial instruments and once in a while do come up with brilliant concepts, but always in the same field. People who can manipulate and tinker with finance can definitely apply their minds successfully at various other things which they never try to.

Its so much of cash doing the rounds every day. An active entry of a bank in the transport sector will change the way everything functions

A telecom company should look at ways to act as clearing agents instead of banks. Remittance is big business ....and what better way to remit money than with the instrument you fiddle with the whole day long....

A company like Infosys I believe is restricting itself and at some point of time the growth will stop. Imagine having around 40% of its balance sheet total in cash. I would say they are playing it too safe, something is terribly wrong. This is what differentiates a TATA or Reliance from everyone else in India, because they have constantly ventured into different sectors. Infosys on the other hand have been doing the same old business for the past many many years and are stocking up too much of cash. Don’t understand why all the IT companies have a penchant to stock up cash. Even after 10-20 years of operations, stock market listings, growths of 30% annually if you are still worried about a cash problem that could emerge due to a sudden depression, then those growth figures don’t mean much.

Also they say that “find a niche” within your sector. Finding niches is alright, but at the same time, niches will get you riches only if its applicable.

Everyone thought Sam Walton did not have much business sense when he started off. Because he decided to have everything in his store, from clothes to grocery to lingerie to crisps. No one had thought of this before. But he became the worlds richest man breaking every single rule in the book. To the extent that he never maintained a proper accounting system. He infact had an ESP accounting system, where ESP stands for Error Some Place. Imagine a company of the size of 18 stores at that time maintaining everything on paper and just writing error some place at the bottom to make their books balance. This is an absolute example of getting on with things without bothering too much about rules and practices. Because the underlying passion of such people does not permit them to bother about things they feel are unneccessary.

Being passionate not packaged is the key to such successes.

Aditya Khandekar