the beauty of simplicity.....

"......the time has come to unleash the creative potential of our scientists and innovators at grassroots level. Only then we can make India truly self-reliant and a leader in sustainable technologies....propose a national foundation for helping innovators all over the country. This fund will build a national register of innovations, mobilize intellectual property protection, set up incubators for converting into viable business opportunities and help in dissemination across the country.''

This is what screams out loudly on the homepage of National Innovation Foundation. I was scouting through a pile of documents looking for a particular one when I suddenly came across a certificate that I had obtained from them during my MBA days at IIT Delhi – me and my team of 4 AV, KB & N reached the zonal finals of a b-school competition hosted by NIF & IIM Ahmedabad. How we reached & finals and that too managed to actually do the scouting in record time & submit the B-plan is a different story altogether.

I don’t remember the dates specifically but it was the second last day of entering the competition. That we registered – it was good till then. Then we sat on it for over 20 days thinking that one would finally take the initiative. Then with 6 days till deadline the panic bell rang. Two from the team decided to give it up and not submit the plans at all – while dutifully me and AV decided to go forward. The night we were supposed to leave for Rampur a remote town in UP, AV walked out citing some problems. Some insane force actually took over and in an hours time I was off with KB to the bus depot to somehow reach Rampur minus any concrete directions to it.

We managed to change a couple of buses & hitch a ride of a tempo and then take a hike for a couple of kilometers – reached our destination took the info of the ‘tile making machine’ and off we went. (It’s a different take that we took a detour to Nainital that afternoon and got back somehow to Delhi next morning – bouncing all night on the last seats of a dilapidated Volvo).

With 3 days till submission we were in a dilemma – the plan was on tile making machine.(figures are close approximations of what we obtained from the inventor)

Cost to setup = Rs 8000-12,000

Raw Materials = Rs 100 /day

No of tiles made = 50/day

Labour Charges = etc

Price of tile = 3 (approx including labour charges)

Cost of a similar tile in market = Rs 5-8

Cost advantage per tile = Rs 2-5

Now looking at the overall picture and the rural economic conditions we decided the best use would be for someone to set up a sort of small workshop with say 20-50 machines which then would not only provide steady employment to people in the locality (believe me the peoples’ economic condition in Rampur was deplorable), and our concept was supported by the inventor as well. Also although the cost advantage of Rs 2-5 per tile was huge one had to keep in mind logistics and sales costs. So individually selling tile making machines we found out was not a viable option at all.

Net-net we aired the same views in the competition and the entire crowd was appreciative of our logical conclusions (even the team that won gave us a standing ovation), but in the end we could not make it to the all-India finals because of the simple fact – we had gone out of scope. The B-plan was that of a “tile making machine”, and the judges contested that I should have prepared a plan that would have enabled them to sell these machines to individuals – how weak an argument when the per capita income is less than Rs 10,000. Just imagine that of uneducated simpletons in rural India. Take again in consideration sales & logistics costs – how would that be borne. These were questions they never addressed. Sigh………

Today I look back and the entire episode makes me smile – with due respect to the judges, I felt then and still feel that simplicity is often the key success factor in innovation. While in retrospect the business model would probably make sense with people with management degrees tweaking the business model every now & then making it complex at each stage to juice out efficiency, the end user who was the rural Indian would be completely at sea manufacturing the stuff, distributing it, and selling it subsequently. That to after spending a couple of years earnings for buying this machine.

Whoa!!! I never saw any sense in that then. Even now as I study various businesses and interact with various people both in and outside my company, this fact emerges every time that simple process planned & executed efficiently, was the indication of success in every organizational function.

“This single point of administration ultimately increases the simplicity of running complicated systems while reducing the cost of ownership a great deal. This is what enterprises are looking for and need”

- Don Becker

Maybe that’s why we are in business.

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its TATA all the way.....

Ever taken pride in something you have never contributed???

I did. Well I guess again then the whole nation should. We shouted in joy when India won the cricket world cup way back in 83, repeated the result in the 20-20 version of the game this year, but somehow I failed to see the kind of pride when L.N. Mittal took over Corus or recently when Tata’s took over the Jaguars & Land Rovers of the world – the excitement was somehow missing in the common man. Yes there was a furore in the media for the last 2 days but then again I feel the Indian media is so inconsistent and adolescent in its principles and functionality and work ethics it was just, “another hot news” for them.

“The man……the machine”, Mr Ratan Tata has somehow managed to transform this famous conglomerate into a global brand in the last 2 decades. One side by keeping the promise and delivering the 1 lakh people’s car, to the other of taking over these iconic brands – delivering something to fit the bills of every man in India.

On a personal note it would be a pleasure to see and breathe these iconic brands that will soon be available in India (Mr. Tata, are you hearing the common man) – I am sure that Tatas will go a long way in emerging amongst the top 10 global brand of the future. And we will all be there to see it happen. Viva India!!!

There is absolutely no point for me trying to write something on which almost every news channel and other sections of the media is rapidly churning out papers on…..so I will leave you all with excerpts from an website I came across…..……the last section brings out the way leaders actually visualize the future…..and act likewise.

The Tata Group has 98 firms and began emerging as a force in the world marketplace in 2000 when it bought Tetley Tea, Britain's top tea-bag brand.

By the time Ratan Tata retires in six years, analysts reckon that international revenues could make up at least 50 percent of group revenues.

The Tata Group, founded in 1868, is a colossus at home, with annual revenues of 29 billion dollars, the equivalent of 3.2 percent of India's GDP, and is the biggest private employer, with 289,500 people on its payroll.

On Thursday it was named the world's third most accountable and transparent company by Britain's One World Trust, an independent research group. General Electric and GlaxoSmithKline were rated numbers one and two.

The Tata Group's founder, Jamsetji Tata, was a strong philanthropist.

He accommodated his steel workers in a model company town in eastern India and his employees worked just eight-hour days -- unheard of in that era.

"He believed the primary purpose of an industrial organisation is to improve the quality of life of the community," declares the company website, a spirit company officials insist endures to this day.

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