Entrepreneur Diary

यह हार एक विराम है
जीवन महासंग्राम है
तिल-तिल मिटूँगा पर दया की भीख मैं लूँगा नहीं
वरदान माँगूँगा नहीं

स्मृति सुखद प्रहरों के लिए
अपने खंडहरों के लिए
यह जान लो मैं विश्व की संपत्ति चाहूँगा नहीं
वरदान माँगूँगा नहीं

क्या हार में क्या जीत में
किंचित नहीं भयभीत मैं
संधर्ष पथ पर जो मिले यह भी सही वह भी सही
वरदान माँगूँगा नहीं

लघुता न अब मेरी छुओ
तुम हो महान बने रहो
अपने हृदय की वेदना मैं व्यर्थ त्यागूँगा नहीं
वरदान माँगूँगा नहीं

चाहे हृदय को ताप दो
चाहे मुझे अभिशाप दो
कुछ भी करो कर्तव्य पथ से किंतु भागूँगा नहीं
वरदान माँगूँगा नहीं

  • श्री शिव मंगल सिंह सुमन

Liquidity and Businesses

Liquidity is like blood, sudden loss of it can kill an otherwise healthy company/body

Companies die due to liquidity issues not because of business model issues.

Indian economy is having severe liquidity crunch & like body – a prolonged loss of blood leaves permanent scar

PSUs and theory of Trust

A nation which doesn’t trust its people, will have its own enterprise while a nation which believes in its people will invest in them. That is the fundamental difference between India vs US or China.

Indian Govt created PSUs, funded them and crowded out private capital and innovation while US dept of defence helped launched multiple defence behemoths and even today are key driver behind the success of likes of Space X etc ..

Equity & Debt

Equity is forgiving and ignore all sins / exuberance while creating reward for all parties but debt like truth is stark, doesn’t allow even marginal error and generally destroy all, its rewarding only to disciplined souls or one backed by again unlimited equity.

Flirtation with debt has rarely ended well be it individuals, corporates or nations.

Debt which ideally shall only be for creating capital assets or meeting capital expenditure, always end up funding consumption or revenue expenditure, and hence doesn’t end well.

Debt require discipline which by design Nation, corporates rarely have as the cost is generally not paid by the one who take the decision of debt. Hence its a asymmetrical proposition – all rewards but no pain and for next in command all pain and no rewards.

India, The land of experts and committees

  1. Indians love committees. 
  2. And more so Governments and politicians.
  3. Whatever the situations or crisis, a group of people at many level are huddled together to solve this.
  4. And a committee is the perfect solution. A set of experts who seems to know finer nuances debate together and bring out a best solution after doing a good “brain storming.”
  5. Seems like that committees are most beautiful product of democracies and there are committees of all type with all fancy names and titles 
  6. There is High empowered group of ministers committees, there is committee of secretaries, there is committee of experts, there is a committee of state ministers, there is committee of assistants, there is committee off mohalla people also 
  7. Interestingly while there might by 100s of committees with variety of people and team, they rarely change the game or able to bring disruptive ideas and reasons may be many 
  8. First and foremost, generally experts or people handing a status quo are not the best people to disrupt it. 
  9. Think of US President forming a committee in 2003 to imagine innovation in mobile 
  10. Which experts would have been natural choices ?
  11. CEO OF Noika, Palm, Ericsson, Sony, Alcatel, Blackberry- in fact in 2019, it is hard to recall champions of Mobile in 2003
  12. Would they have invited Steve Jobs from Apple or senior guys from other leading brands of today. 
  13. Or a team to discuss banking reform and ease micropayment in 2010!! Would PayTM be a part of same or top executives from HDFC / ICICI / SBI driven it. 
  14. But that is the not the only flaw of teams / committees that look at rear view mirror and past rather future
  15. The even worse outcome of a team / committee is the outcome which is always a compromise, a timid agreement or the common minimum program
  16. An agreement, a consensus is fundamentally flawed as it has already devoid of hope and is more suited to fulfilling agenda, personal relationship or timidity of the room than that of hope and bold new dawn.
  17. In committees, either the orators win, or the strongmen. History has shown that in fight between phosphor and wrestler, it is always the wrestler which wins but not that the solution by wrestler is the the best solution. 
  18. And one of the biggest flaw is lack of accountability and ownership. It is decision of group, so nobody can be blamed for it as its always the group, and hence there is no skin in the game. 
  19. A decision without skin in the game is like headless chicken and is doomed for failure from day one while protecting its decision makers from any of negative consequences. And hence no soul.
  20. Hence a committee or group of experts is always a path to backward and leads to nowhere 
  21. No nation , or company or society has been built by a team of experts but by leaders and their core group who can dare to imagine and bend the spoon. 
  22. Remaining societies / teams / companies / nations just form the committees and study the outcome. 
  23. The End

The night that stayed

Long back ago on a starry night,

I met a thief, 

He had an attitude

And yes lot of stories

Interesting ones,

funny ones,

But then as it turned out

all were fake

while i was mentoring him, 

he was stealing on my name

And now he is offended,

As not believing something which was once believed 

Is also a violation of faith

Change of pattern

And thief feels betrayed that no longer I hear his stories

and the night is refusing to end

Oh I met a thief and he got an attitude

Capital & Labour

There is capital and there is labor.

Both fight for primacy of each other 

And where Capital is expensive, labor becomes cheap,

and where capital is cheap, labor besoms expensive

and gain dignity

 Incidentally nations leaning on Socialism, keep capital expensive and labor cheap 

And hard core capitalistic societies keep capital cheap and see labor becoming expensive and gaining dignity

Paradox of Ideologies

War & Peace and personal positions in the time of Social Media

You are either a Warmongers or Peaceniks – unfortunately both positions are wrong

India is run by an experienced professional setup so leave their job on them and focus on yours. Support nation and keep opinions low

Still if you have strong views, do something which costs

Ideologies always cost, and if your opinions don’t cost, you are an opportunist not an ideologue.

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