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  • My Father – Gandhi

    This is one of the recent films I saw. This is one of the better movies I have seen off late. This movie is about Mahatma Gandhi’s eldest son Hari.
    This Akshay Khanna has played the role of Hari Das Mohan Das karma chand Gandhi, to life.
    The movie depicts the internal conflict that Hari had to under go; his difference of opinions with his father. In his search for his own life which he did not intend to spend in the shadow of the great M K Gandhi, he falters and falters…. in every mode of his life. Some times it looks as though, Bapu did not understand Hari’s aspirations, just went ahead with his own ideals and this is what forced Hari to take the route he did. Hari had big dreams for himself… he wanted to be a barrister like his father, he did not understand the orientation that Bapu had given to his own life. Bapu was an Icon with great principles and practices, but, Hari was an open challenge to him in most aspects. Hari wanted to study further, but was not gaining the necessary support nor the real passion to go ahead and make it big.
    Having faced a lot of failure in his life, he had made his own world view, it is in this world view that he tied himself up, his want for an independent recognition and some easy way to get rich; got him to live his life in such a way as to question Gandhiji’s ideology.

    The movie depicts the struggle that a son faces when he has an Iconic father…. really a thought to ponder over…. there is an old saying In Kannada… which means there is not much grass under a banyan tree.

  • The indus spray story…

    [This is my attempt to write a story / case based on the man org project that we had as part of our course… well this case is a mix of fact and fiction… take it in the spirit… nothing more… I dont intend to make any statements of judgment through this article….]

    It’s very important to start a good story from the beginning, so here we start from how it all began.

    Mr Shashidhar, with his entrepreneur spirit found a huge market for the tapping in the packaging domain. He decided to try his idea out, and started off pushing at 3M for a contract of packaging its aerosols and lubricants. 3M was the first company that he chose thanks to tow major thought process, – firstly the huge quantity of packaging that 3M has to do, and the potential gains if this was outsourced to Indus Spray, second 3M is known for supporting entrepreneur ideas, so all that Mr Shashidhar would have to do was get a buy in showing the lower costs and other benefits.

    The road to an enterprise is not an easy task for its entrepreneur; nor was it any easier for Mr Shashidhar. He had to make a number of visits to the 3M Company before he could actually get the contract for packaging of the lubricants and the aerosols. Well it is surely not enough to start off with just the manufacturing of the products right away, he had to get the area for setting up his plant, and clearance norms so that he could get the packaging of the goods once the contract was confirmed.

    While on one hand Shirdhar was trying for a contract on the other he was setting up his small scale industry for packaging. He set up the factory in Electronics city on the outskirts of Bangalore. Well why did he choose this particular location? The potential advantages that a start up would need, so as to let it grow into a larger firm is the answer. Electronics City, being on the outskirts of Bangalore, has access to lower tax rate (or is it a holiday?), the second most important criteria, is the cost of labor; the skill needed for this packaging was relatively less and so all that was needed was mostly unskilled labor. The location advantage coupled with the low labor cost was the major factor in choosing the company at Electronics city.

    The company had access to low cost unskilled labor, but if all the work was to be done manually, it would be a huge overhead when there was a large order to be completed. This necessitated the need of some machined to enable faster and quicker delivery, the cost of labor was substituted by a one time investment in machinery. For this purpose, machinery was imported form Germany, and the necessary technical support was obtained from the Indian collaborator of the German firm, to set up the machinery and other related maintenance.

    Having the necessary machines, the labor, and a location where it could handle the raw material and the completed goods, he was waiting to start off with the packaging once the deal struck.

    The deal stuck and it was time to get to the shop floor for Mr Shashidhar, though he started of looking into the routine working of the packaging department, as time moved on, he realized there were other pressing needs to be catered to. There was the finance that had to be taken care, the accounting of the firm, the stores to manage the inventory; if Shashidhar was engaged in all these routine activity he would have no time to work on the growth plan of the company. He hired a person who could take the responsibility of looking into the daily handling of the company affairs, be it stores, or finance or even production. This person became the general manager of the company, who would look into the daily handling of the company. At this point the structure of the company was simple with just a General Manager who would look in the aspects of the company, such as the production, the accounts, the stores. He would report directly to The MD.

    MD was involved placing the strategy for the company that he had started off with. He had to start gaining a suitable margin for the products that he produced, considering the large volume that was to be packed, and relatively low expenditure, a small margin on the product would do. There was virtually no transaction specific investment that Indus Spray had to do for the packaging of the products. The machines that were set up had a generic capacity and nothing much would change if 3M decided to let go with Indus Spray and a new customer would come in. This acted as an advantage; there was no transaction specific investment to be done for the 3M.

    How ever, 3M was taking a major bet by outsourcing the packaging to such an upstart company. 3M was an established brand and a major leader in the lubricants and the aerosol industry. The packaging of these products had to be of a high standard, in case it has to have the advantage that is has, so it was taking a huge risk To mitigate the risk, it agreed to hand over the packaging of the products to Indus Spray if it agreed that it would be the only consumer it would cater to. This was a hard bet for Indus Spray, but it had to agree for two major reasons, the market that 3M gave and the reputation that would be earned on being earned due to association with 3M.

    Indus Spray now had the order, now had such a big company as its client, 3M would supply all the necessary material, all that Indus Spray had to do was just pack the products and return to it. The initial consignment was mostly of lubricants to be packed. Well with all the material available, it is quite logical to assume that Indus spray could use all the material and make a brand of its own, why doesn’t this happen? Well the brand that 3M has serves as a hedge in such an attempt, even if Indus Spray made its own brand from the material supplied, it would not be able to make a head way into the market.

    With continued association 3M gained confidence in the work that Indus Spray was doing. With trust being a major capital now, 3M decided to hand over the packaging of aerosols to Indus Spray. Indus Spray had to invest into obtaining the permission to use LPG for its production, was this transaction specific investment that Indus spray was getting into? First sight gives us that impression, makes us believe that 3M was getting a better grip in the contract than Indus Spray, well a deeper insight which the MD gave enabled us to clarify this confusion. Indus Spray wants to venture into the Deodorants packag
    ing business, and this was a logical first step to obtain permission for use of LPG. Thus an investment that looked so transaction specific is what forms a part of the much larger gain to Indus Spray.

    Now with 3M gaining confidence in the work that Indus Spray was doing it was time for Indus Spray to try and enlarge its client sphere. The MD who was till now occupied with the his co-ordination with 3M to build trust now had to shift focus, as the relation ship was quite stable, and growth is what “makes” a firm.

    After 3 years of association with 3M, it was now time for the MD to look for new avenues to expand. For this he had to ensure that 3M gave the permission, and make a provision to let Indus Spray have another customer. After a bit of running around, 3M finally granted the permission to go ahead, Indus had to ensure that it did not hamper the deal with 3M.

    The next client that 3M wanted to get in contact with was Natural Remedies. Natural Remedies was into the business of herbal medicines, the domain was completely different, and did anything differ? Well not much, with a generic capability in manufacturing and the association with 3M to back with, it was not difficult to see that Natural Remedies did not have much difficulty to collaborate with Indus Spray.

    Natural remedies did have some minor modification to make from 3M in the caps that were needed, the nozzles etc. The supply of these nozzles and crowns led to association with another supplier. This business was slowly turning from the service of packaging to procuring the material for the purpose of packaging.

    The margin was low and, the volumes were high and so it was a profitable business to be in. The competitors where not many, because the low margin on each product doesn’t let many firm get into, its also hard to find clients like 3M when you start off, who can give you the market that you need. These factors provide a hedge against a lot of firms entering into competition and let the market to the existing firms.

    While Indus spray concentrated on the packaging of the products, being a low margin high volume business it could not spend a lot of amount on investment in maintenance, and fixed cost on permanent labor. To reduce these costs, Indus doesn’t have any permanent staff other than the GM. Other employees are daily/weekly wage workers and are hired as needed. The maintenance of the property, security is outsourced, which would reduce the cost of maintenance, and security. Here we find that the company has already outsourced the most possible area for outsourcing, the support staff. Being the cost leader is what has emphasized this move.

    The packaging needed is rather uniform through out the year and doesn’t vary much except when a bulk deal comes from 3M. In case of such high demands, additional labor can be obtained by word of mouth and this gives Indus Spray and additional flexibility.

    Other factors of environment needed for production like electricity which is not too regular considering that Karnataka is a power starved state, emerges as major hurdle in the production process. But again thanks to the employees who are flexible, ready to work during off peak hours and complete the production on schedule.

    This gets into another dimension that is visible, the interpersonal skill of the entrepreneur. The commitment of the unskilled low cost labor, which is not a permanent workforce, shows the interpersonal capacity of the entrepreneur in reaching to the emotional need of respect that the labor posses. While this is one of the strong points of the company, there is a need for constant growth.

    The company till now has been able to move from 3M to gain a new client in Natural Remedies, but does it stop at this? No, there is huge potential for growth, there are a number of packaging areas to enter into. The MD wanted to reap heavy profits and that is exactly why he entered into this business, so what does he do next?

    Mr Shashidhar, went on to obtain an alcohol license, this needed a lot of work and is not hassle free. The long term aim of the MD and hence the company is to move into the high margin Deodorant packing business. Recently the company has been able to obtain the alcohol license that was needed for such a deo-packing industry. This gives it a boost into creating much higher profits.

  • Everything u desire- HarshDeep Jolly

    This book by Harsh Deep, an alumni of IIMB, is a brief description of what one can expect to have when in the campus.
    Personally I am not too happy with the way the book is written, not too great as a start off.. think he could have done a better job.. The narration is not all that great either… the only thing u can look forward to in the book… what to expect in the 2 yrs on campus, how u grow ur frnd circle and things like it.
    The book has content to deliver but doesn’t stand in any comparison to the creativity of Chetan Bhagat- “the 5 . some1″… well that differs from individual to individual rt… may be was expecting a bit more here… A bit more creativity form Harsh would have made it really big…
    The story revolves arnd the main character hash and his set of friends… well this is harshdeep himself… and others are a combination of some of his close associates in college… deals the love life of a few ppl really nicely… and finally realizes what he goofed up himself.. this was sort of the only deviation from the otherwise badly narrated book… well pardon me if it sounds harsh but its my personal opinion.

  • Hudugaata-Movie Review

    This is Ganesh’s 3rd film as a hero… well not sure if it did become a big hit… but after the violence that marked the first day first show of the movie… it seems to be in news definitely.
    I watched the movie long time back in june, did not get the time to blog.. now I get some time so here is what I felt about the movie…
    The story line is very close to mungaru male in some sense…the basic difference its that in mungaru male the hero doesn’t get his heroin in this he does… 🙂
    well Ganesh has done a good job with his acting… Rekha her usual oomph!!! A lot of comedy sequences… to add… a nice entertainment…
    Well the whole story doesn’t imprint itself on the mungaaru male line… but u can surely see the attempt towards the end…. The story is about a long journey of Ganesh and Rekha to kanyakumari… this is THE story if u want to think so… well noting much to look for in this movie.. not on par with the expectations of a lot of fans of Ganesh..

  • Fermat’s Last Theorem – Simon Singh

    This is the first book written by Simon singh and a best seller.
    Simon gives a lucid description of the journey to the conquest of the theorem…

    Its really a historical book… describing the journey from Greeks, the formation of the mathematical concepts, to the proof of the theorem. This book gives a nice insight into the formation of the problem and the evolution…
    Simon as usual has made it really interesting with an awesome narration… The book gives an insight into the mathematical world and into the lifes of a lot of mathematicians, some how died young others who challenged athority and gave a whole new perspective…
    The fermat’s last theorem was unconquered until the last decade… it has challenged the mathematicians for more than 250 years… so that shows what it meant to conquer it… doesnt it?
    Fermat’s thm.. required the culmination of a lot of fields of mathematics and a single minded and dedicated effort by Andrew John Wiles to complete this proof. It was for a man of Andrew’s caliber to get to its proof… having been excited by the simple looking problem …. it became his child hood dream to realize the proof…
    If I say, this book is a dedication to his effortsm it would not be wrong…

    A book worth a purchase if u like to read abt maths and worth reading for any one….

  • Big Bang – Simon Singh

    Big Bang – this is the first book I have read by Simon Singh… makes me feel I have to read more books by him… just loved the style of narration.

    Simon Singh is not just a physicist but also a lucid writer, the style of his writing is just too good.

    Big Bang this book deals with the creation of the universe and, is a historical account of the way the modern theory has evolved. It’s a brief description of how this, now famous, theory has evolved, so it essential has an element of History in it. That makes the description even more beautiful… now u don’t just know what the theory has but also have the way it has evolved. A really neat description of cosmological journey-right from ancient Greek to the modern world.
    The account of this journey is really well presented, not at one moment did I loose interest and felt I wanted to take a break, its just so enticing, I just wanted to read further each time I took up this book after a break, but had to stop thanks to other works being a priority.
    This book is not just about this particular theory but gives a neat account of other competing theories as well. The Steady State theory, the earth centric theory are the main ones – these are not dealt in detail but to a certain extent that might be needed for Big Bang and its story.
    The effort of the experimental physicist is not undermined anywhere, they are given dew credit; the marvel of serendipity is also taken care.
    Really a nice read, am sure it will generate an interest in any one for astronomical reading.

  • Challenge familiarity

    Almost every one of us want to live in a familiar domain… we want to stay in the city that we are familiar with… we want to keep company only with those whom we already know… we want to visit only those places which we know and are accustomed to, we want things to be easy and laid out. In general its the cozy feeling that we want to stay with… we don’t want to try something that might involve a risk, some challenge in it… we want the path of least resistance…
    Well form another angle do we really benefit from this sort of an attitude, I hardly feel at any point we might have gained from such an attitude. If we look back in life its always been rewarding one way or another to challenge this love for familiarity that we have…. each of our experiences show that when we tried something new and difficult we have come out with a new understanding and perspective to the particular work or a whole new experience that has mad us richer and more open which is essential to our life on a much larger scale…


    Essentially I don’t find any reason why we should not try something new… of course that we have to have the time and the resources that might be needed for the particular purpose… So just go ahead and try the next time you are contemplating as to – “TO DO OR NOT TO DO!!!”

  • Me and efi

    EFI – Electronics for Imaging.

    Its been almost 23 month since I joined EFI… I stand now on the verge of entering into IIMB for my PGDM. I think its the time for me to look back at the stay at efi and concentrate on my experiences here.

    Right after my grad exams in 2005 I took a break, and it was almost a month. I was feeling frustrated sitting at home. My on-campus recruit -Huawie had given me a joining date in September. I could not just wait that long. I got a call from efi for an interview on June 25 th… It was a Saturday and the venue was the old office of efi (above globus, Kormangala).
    My interview was taken by Dyllon and then a round with Krishna… It was rather a simple interview… and was confident of getting in.. so was it to be…. I landed inEFI, to accept the offer letter and join the troupe of new recruit freshers. I joined on the 27 th of June 2005 in EFI as Associate Software Enggr (I am still that…. he he [:D]).
    It was Poonam Bajaj who handed over a bag… with efi stitched on it and some other stationery material… We were guided into the conference hall that was then turned into a training hall for us. This was group of 13 freshers… We went through two sessions of training… the first week was on domain related stuff… a lot ofTLs coming in and giving us fundas… clearing our fundas…[I truly don’t know how much of it has remained in my head… but used to note down all those points… [;)]] I only recallRajneesh and Venkat giving us fundas.. cant recall anything greater than that now. It was in these training sessions that I got my 2 best pals…. Vikas Shayana (Progressively sleeping!!!) and Vinay Setty. After this session of Domain knowledge, we went through a session of training in C++. Thanks to N S Kumar, I got to learn C++ with its “philosophy”.
    After the technical coaching we had a week’s time to wander about, we made a trip to Nandi Hills, and got back, a freshers party at Three-Quarter Chinese. We then were called for a “one-one” session with Poonam to take note of our interests and try allotting us into the domain that we liked the most. It was also a feedback session on the training program. After about a couple of days during which we watched a movie inPVR, we got assigned to our teams.
    I was inducted to Rajneesh’s team that was working on CWS wx then… due to some reason this project got scrapped. It was my first interaction with a team at efi. Arthi K, was set as my mentor by Rajneesh. The initial task that Rajneesh assigned to me was learning wxWidgets. I used to browse through the help pages, look at the sample and then start coding the samples in my own way. this continued on for about 10 days after which I was given my fist assignment byRajneesh , It was to design a message box that would take in strings of any length and then wrap the string to some set number of alphabets and then display it. It was my first assignment and thanks to the initial “Josh” I finished this very quickly.Rajneesh then was on testing this application and suggesting modifications…It was all exciting one to learn this new library… very often I would stumble across something think.. “It must be hard to do” and then look at the code… debug get the thought process right and attempt it…this helped me learn a lot quicker… just to add to it.. I would try it out… and when it works, there was nothing more exciting than it.
    After a couple of weeks of this assignment, Rajneesh took me to a meeting, it was here that I learnt my first major lesson, We had discussion on some stuff that was being planned and I was to do something (cant recall what) in it. After the meeting I went toRajneesh personally and suggested something, he immediately gave me an important lesson – “Man, if u want to tell out something, do it when you are asked for and people are listening. Don’t expect people to speak for you, you will have to speak for yourself.” These words had a great impact on me.
    It was around this time that Arthi left the company and I was the only person working directly under Rajneesh for the CWS wx version. The work load was not all that great and it was just some samples that I was working on. Then Rajneesh got involved into HotFolders. I was still on bench nothing serious that I was doing. Around a week into the project, Rajneesh gave my first assignment, to develop a testing application for Filter that would be used in the Hot Folders Application. I was supposed to develop only theUI part and not worry about the implementation. This was the first application that I has to make decisions on how and what controls I would be using…. This was a very nice and thought provoking experience.
    While professionally this phase was a learning one for me… there was not much of productivity that was put up for efi. I began understanding and appreciating what Rajeesh was doing… I began to appreciate the way he handled things.. not much of tension, very frank in his speech, helping if he can else just saying it our frankly… accepting he doesn’t know when he doesn’t now, and most importantly not letting himself down under any situation – in short I got to see a lot of idealizing things in him.. In short he is the coolest TL I have ever had. We got to know each other better and slowly transformed from a TL and a ASE to good friends. The common thing that got us very close was our interest towards book. We both were bibliophiles… and even to this day we keep discussing on various books..
    After around a month of such kidding and being paid for all the party that I had, Atul called me in, and put me into a different team. Being without work, I was eagerly waiting for work…. No better time to come ah!!! Ya I got to join theColorWise team, headed by Venkat Reddy.
    It was under quite a bad state at that time…. with Venkat trying to get it past the ‘ALPHA’ milestone and it flopping all the time. Is was around September end that I joined this group. Shiva andRajiv were already in this group from the gang of freshers-05. It is here that I got to meet another peculiar person – Kanhayia. Slowly down the line there was one more person to be added to this list…. Pankaj Bhalla. This trio – Kanhayia, Pankaj and myself, you would find them invariably doing night outs soon… [;)]
    I was asked to solve a few defects in one of the common library – Select Profile by Venkat… These were mostly some UI changes. It was fun doing these things… not major work at all… later on this helped me become what Raghu to day calls me – ‘A Sizer Expert’ [;)] (I am not sure about that though.). Occasionally I used to get some logic related defect, but then it was not a major one, and could be easily handled. I can still recall vividly the first review of code thatVenkat did, the first check-in. Venkat wanted to teach me in a very affectionate way, but may be I was not mature enough to know all that. I was looking stars when he made changes, to the code, then build something, compile something somewhere, and finally get theexe. Venkat was waiting to get me into the release management of Color Profiler. After about 3 weeks into Profiler I began making builds…. and this was followed by an upload to the prerel.
    Our release was scheduled on Friday and Tuesday. Friday was then the day most of the releases were done, we did not have a RMS like we have today so every one had to use the same available bandwidth to upload the binaries to prerel. Invariable it would take 2 to 3 hours or sometimes even more than that.
    Our product is an integrated product, that consists of a few applications that come from US. We used to get these binaries, then integrate it with our local applications that we develop and then copy these binaries after our testing (noQA then, it was just the developer verifying). We would fix the defect so locally that we would just test the fix for its working, not actually going through the complete flow to analyse the side effect… invariably we would find a defect at the last minute… andKanhayia would run back to his desk to fix it.. finally he would make some alterations and fix it (am not sure what exactly would be his fix in such a short time….[;)]) He was used to working under such pressure that he used to say – “it is only under such pressure that my Brain works properly man!!!”
    It was a real pressure cooker sort of situation.. Venkat Reddy was under immense pressure… he had the art of getting extra time under any circumstance. I have not seen the similar art in Raghu… well you can’t expect everyone to have everything, right? Kanhayia, myself and later on Pankaj all got into the similar situation… all a pressure cooker.. no one was better… occasionally we used to get some half an hour break in our work.. and then the work would get on. My friends used to say – “earlier u would return home at 6:00pm sharp… now even if the world break u stay atefi!!!” Well that was the state our work was in…
    Around Feb the project that I was working moved from Venkat to Raghu…. and around a fortnight later i got my first feature development… Thanks to the expert guidance from Kanhayia and Raghu, I could finish this implementation quickly and it was a big confidence boost for me.
    May be it was only Raghu who could get the process straight, not many identified there was a flaw in the sytem… slowly the process had to improve… what was more necessary was develping confidence between the two teams… the spec and related documents had to be worked out in a right way… we needed a local QA who could be quick enough in identifying the defects if any first hand… A lot of processes needed to be changed…
    What the most striking realization was… there was not a proper structure for the module… This became our starting point. Raghu sat back and got the design diagrams for the project. At this juncture, Pankaj decided to leave our group and move on to another company… that was followed by Janaki Madam, and Sudheer’s arrival into the team…. Once the design was ready it was a matter of setting the design right… but the problem was you cant correct it over night… it has to be done in a smooth manner…
    In the mean time, Kanhayia decided to quit… we shifted to the new office. The process improved but the father of PrinterProfiler – KK was not there to watch it past all the marks to go to the market. I was the only fortunate one to have seen all the three phases. All through the initial phase of theQA we had Bhaskar, giving us company in all the late night shows…. he he [:D]
    After the QA process got added we had to finish off the release of the project a bit early, and then both the QA and engineering got a bit more time to test the binaries…. Slowly the things started falling in place… That is what happens – when a right decision is taken, you make more better decisions and slowly bail yourself out of problem.
    From Raghu, I learnt the art of withstanding the storm and taking the boat to the shore… it takes a lot of time and effort to rescue a sinking ship… I learnt a lot of things from him.

    Now the Fun part:

    There are a couple fun memories associated with my stay at efi….
    1. The EFI cricket tournament –
    I remember this was the first match of the tournament for our team… I was on a Saturday that we chose to play this match… And we had to make the Friday release…. [:)]…KK had left home early, Bhaskar and I were the only two members in the group who where present…. Bhaskar began his testing at 10:00pm… I decided to have a nap while he tested the product on 3 platforms…. he would inevitably take 4 hours to complete the whole process.. I began my nap on the floor at 11 and he was busy measuring.. at 1 he woke me up asking me to upload the binaries… the process got completed at 2 am and we reached home in the company cab.
    Next day we had a match at 7:30am…. I landed in at the right time.. and we were to bat first… I don’t know what was in my head but I made a quickfire 36 that helped us win the match…. [:)]

    2. The Diwali celebrations at the new office.
    I vividly remember this, we were all engrossed in our own work, Raghu got back from his native after a vacation. He called up a meeting of all his team members… and told we have this event here…. we want to get the first price in this. We began doing the planning that day and decided to give an attempt for the first price… The whole team went about doing things with missionary zeal, all of us contributing our bit to the preparations. We made a nigh out till 4 am in the morning, then got home… had a small nap changed our attire and got back.
    This event gave me a lot of realization and self reflection thought… thank to the pot painting that I did. i began to question myself!!! The refection of this helped me realise a lot of thing about myself. It was then that I began preparing for CAT….

    Now I stand here on the verge of quitting efi, its been one huge learning experience for me.. one who joined as a fresher.. I have been able to manage my day the way I want, that has been the best part of the life here.
    I have only made a mention of those people whom I interacted a lot… this is not a detailed story so don’t blame me, I have not added many experiences..

  • Prime numbers the pillars of Mathematics!!!

    Well just a profound realization that I had recently, its about how important prime numbers are for Mathematics….

    For a moment, it occurred to me that all the natural numbers except one and primes can be represented as prime numbers…. Am sure every one knows this…. its called prime factorization….

    Just imagine if there were no prime numbers… there will be no numbers other than unity (1)!!!
    Surprising isn’t it? Yes but that is true…. It’s really hard to have anything if not for prime numbers and the operation of scaling them. Yes, call it scaling… multiplying one with another to get a composite number.

    The analogy that I can draw from this understanding is… We can consider prime numbers to be “Bricks” that occur naturally in nature, we just pile up these naturally occurring bricks to form what we want… These Primes are for sure the pillars on which the whole natural numbers stand and hence our understanding.

    These primes have not definite pattern of repetitions, they are scattered across the whole space… occasionally you stumble by them and start using them from then on… They are the pillars that hold the numbers… All the composite numbers are constituents built by just scaling them!!!

    Beauty isn’t it…

  • Azim Premji Chairman and CEO WIPRO Technologies

    Azim Premji stands today with numerous laurels and achievements. Premji has been honoured as being the – “Business Man of the year” – 2000, by Business India Magazine. From a beginning that was given to him by his ancestors to being a millionaire, it has been one huge journey for Premji. Born on July 24th, 1945, Premji has today become an icon for most Indian budding entrepreneurs. Premji was doing his undergraduate program at Stanford University, in 1966 when he was called back to India following the sudden demise of his father. At the age of 21, he was entrusted with the responsibility of handling the family vegetable oil business.
    Premji eventually sought—and received—permission to study arts courses by correspondence to complete the requirements for his bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering. The Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee and the Manipal Academy of Higher Education (2000) have both conferred honorary doctorates on him. At the first general body meeting of the company a shareholder had doubted Premji’s ability in handling the company and had advised him to hand it over to mature management!! This spurred Premji and made him all the more dertermined to make WIPRO a success story! Success story indeed it has been, under his leadership WIPRO has grown a lot. Starting with the family business of vegetable oil, WIPRO later on diversified to get into various fields. From Vegetable oil it diversified into to bakery fats, ethnic ingredient based toiletries, hair care soaps, baby toiletries, lighting products and hydraulic cylinders. Thereafter Premji made a focused shift from soaps to software. Today WIPRO is a household name as a huge software company.

    Under Premji’s leadership, WIPRO has grown from a Rs 70 million company in hydrogenated cooking oil to a pioneer in providing integrated business, technology and process solutions on a global delivery platform. Today, WIPRO Technologies is the largest independent R&D service provider in the world. It also ranked among the top 100 companies globally with a turnover exceeding 2.3 billion US Dollars.

    Premji started off in WIPRO with the simple vision to build an organization on a foundation of values.

    Premji believes that ordinary people can do extraordinary things, the key to achieve the extraordinary is creating highly charged teams. He takes personal interest in building teams and leaders. He devotes significant amount of time as a faculty in WIPRO’s leadership development programs. Premji has a fanatical belief in delivering Value to the Customer through world-class quality processes. This belief has driven Wipro’s pioneering efforts on Quality. Wipro was the first Indian Company to embrace Six Sigma, the first Software Services Company in the world to achieve SEI CMM Level 5 and it also became the world’s first organization to achieve PCMM Level 5 (People Capability Maturity Model). Premji equates Quality with Integrity – both being non-negotiable. In 2001, he was voted among the 20 most powerful men in the world by Asiaweek. He was also among the 50 richest people in the world from 2001 to 2003 according to Forbes. In April 2004, he was rated among the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine. His assets include 84% holding in Wipro Technologies (the remaining belonging to the co-founder of Wipro). In January 2006, he was the 10th richest man in the world. He has been awarded the prestigious Padmabhushana award in 2005 from the Govt of India. He is also a member of the Prime Minister’s Committee for Trade and Industry in India. Premji in put up in Bangalore, and has a family comprising of Wife: Yasmeen Premji Sons: Rishad Premji married to Aditi Premji; Tariq Premji Azim Premji Foundation

    Azim Premji Foundation says it “Aims at making a tangible impact on identified social issues by working in active partnership with the Government and other related sections of the society”. The Foundation was set up with financial resources contributed by Azim Premji. It believes that “Education is the vital element in the development and progress of our nation”.

    Programmes of the Azim Premji Foundation focus on “creating effective and scalable models that significantly improve the quality of learning in the school and ensure satisfactory ownership by the community in the management of the school”. Azim Premji Foundation says it “dedicates itself to the cause of Universalization of Elementary Education in India.”

    Azim Premji’s Eight steps to excellence Here is what Premji has to say about the secret of success

    These are changing times. Yet in the middle of all the changes there is one thing that constantly determines success. Some call it leadership. But to my mind, it is the single-minded pursuit of excellence.

    Excellence endures and sustains. It goes beyond motivation into the realms of inspiration. Excellence can be as strong a uniting force as solid vision.

    Excellence does not happen in a vacuum. It needs a collective obsession as I have experienced the benefits of excellence in my own life. Excellence is a great starting point for any new organisation but also an unending journey. What is excellence? It is about going a little beyond what we expect from ourselves. Part of the need for excellence is imposed on us externally by our customers. Our competition keeps us on our toes, especially when it is global in nature.

    But the other driver of excellence is internal. I have found that excellence is not so much a battle you fight with others, but a battle you fight with yourself, by constantly raising the bar and stretching yourself and your team. This is the best and the most satisfying and challenging part about excellence.

    How does one create excellence in an organisation?

    First, we create an obsession with excel
    lence. We must dream of it not only because it delivers better results but because we truly believe in it and find it intrinsically satisfying to us.

    We must think of excellence not only with our mind but also with our heart and soul. Let us look outside, at the global standards of excellence in quality, cost and delivery and let us not rest till we surpass them.

    Second, we need to build a collective self-confidence. Organisations and people who pursue excellence are self-confident. This is because excellence requires tremendous faith in one’s ability to do more and in a better way. Unless, we believe we can do better, we cannot.

    Third, we must understand the difference between perfection for its own sake and excellence. Time is of essence. Globalisation has made the customer only more impatient. This may seem like a paradox: should we aim for excellence or should we aim for speed?

    Excellence is about doing the best we can and speed lies in doing it quickly. These two concepts are not opposed to each other; in fact, speed and timeliness are important elements of quality and excellence.

    Fourth, we must realise that we cannot be the best in everything we do. We must define what we are or would like to be best at and what someone else can do better.

    Excellence is no longer about being the best in India. It is about being the best in the world. We have to define what our own core competencies are and what we can outsource to other leaders. Headaches shared are headaches divided.

    Fifth, we must create processes that enable excellence. Today, there are a number of global methods and processes available whether it is Six Sigma, CMM or ISO. Use them because they are based on distilled wisdom collected from the best companies in the world.

    Also, we must build a strong foundation of information technology, because in this complex, dynamic world, it is imperative that we use the most modern tools to keep processes updated.

    Sixth, we must create a culture of teaming. I have found that while great individuals are important, one cannot have pockets of excellence. Quality gives ample opportunities to build a culture of teaming. Cross-functional teams that are customer facing can cut through an amazing amount of bureaucracy, personal empire building and silos and deliver savings that one would not have imagined possible.

    The other advantage of building teams focused on quality is that the teaming culture eventually spreads to the rest of the organisation and teaming becomes a way of life.

    Seventh, invest in excellence for the future. Future always seems to be at a distance. But it comes upon you so suddenly that it catches you by surprise, if not shock. What constitutes excellence in the future will be significantly different from what it is today.

    In these days of severe market pressures, there is big temptation to sacrifice the future to look good in the present. We must certainly trim our discretionary expenses, but we must ensure that our investments in strategic areas that lead to excellence in the future are protected.

    Finally, excellence requires humility. This is especially needed when we feel we have reached the peak of excellence and there is nothing further we can do. We need an open mind to look at things in a different way and allow new inputs to come in.

    Otherwise, there is a real danger of becoming complacent or even downright arrogant. I would like to end my talk with a story that illustrates this very well.

    A brilliant young professor went to meet a famous Zen master to have a discussion with him on Zen. He found himself in front of a modest house. He rang the doorbell and waited. A while later, he heard shuffling footsteps and the door was opened by the Zen master.

    He invited the professor to sit with him on the dining table. The professor was a little disappointed with the shabby appearance of the Zen master. He started quizzing him immediately on comparative philosophies and the Zen master gave some brief answers.

    When the professor began to debate with him on those answers, the Zen master stopped speaking and kept smiling at him. Finally, the professor got angry. He said, “I have come from a long distance just to understand the relevance of Zenism. But apparently you have nothing to say. I have not learnt anything from you at all.”

    At this point, the Zen master asked the professor to have some tea. When the professor held the cup, the Zen master started pouring tea into it. After some time, the tea started spilling and the professor shouted, “Stop! The cup can contain no more.”

    The Zen Master stopped and then, once again smiling, he said, “A mind, full of itself can receive nothing. How can I speak to you of Zenism until you empty your mind to learn.” The professor understood and apologized to the Zen master. He parted from him, the Zen master — a wiser man.

    The author is Chairman & Managing Director, Wipro Limited.


    src:http://www.rediff.com/money/2005/jan/17spec.htm

    src: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azim_Premji http://www.answers.com/topic/azim-premji http://www.rediff.com/money/2005/jan/17spec.htm http://www.wipro.com/webpages/aboutus/azim.htm http://www.iloveindia.com/indian-heroes/azim-premji.html