Volkswagen has launched its India website that features the Passat and the Touareg. Everything looks refined on the site except the image on the page that features the Touareg.
Why a dog in the picture that too of one that’s passing water on a tree?
The fact that 28% of the population in India with the highest IQ’s is greater than the total population of North America makes the dream sound quite realistic.
But, consider these news snippets over the past one week:
On Monday, a man - identified as Salim - was caught trying to snatch a woman’s chain in the Nath Nagar area of Bhagalpur. A mob soon gathered and beat up the man. His hands were tied behind his back as the crowd kicked and punched him in the face.
Salim was later tied to a motorcycle and dragged around. The footage shows a policeman riding the motorcycle to which he was tied.
All this while the policemen present there did nothing to stop the mob.
And, this:
Saharsa district magistrate Niranjan Kumar Choudhary has received marching orders after he failed to recognise Bihar CM Nitish Kumar when he called him up to inquire about flood relief operations.
” Main CM bol raha hoon. Apka itna hi vaktabya apke suspension ke liye kafi hai (I am the CM speaking. Your statement is enough for your suspension),”
The last but by no means the least, this masterpiece:
A former CPM legislator grabbed a lady army officer on Darjeeling Mail last night and apparently urinated on her.
A couple of hours before, a sloshed Prakash Minj allegedly took a leak on civil defence minister Srikumar Mukherjee, who was also in the AC II-tier coach.
The minister called police, but did not file a complaint. Major Minta P. Devgan did.
What do you think now?
After having spent a considerable amount of time in the Indian IT Services Industry and having seen different models, I am tempted to think aloud how life has been at these places.
The Zoo
A captive unit set up by an MNC in India to source low cost solutions which will give them an edge in the market. Life is peaceful in a zoo. You don’t have to fight for your bread and butter. It will come your way; you don’t have to compete with anyone for your piece of meat. Bouquets are easier to get and brickbats may not really hurt so much since the sender is after all a foreign counterpart who knows that the outcome of not keeping the captives happy could mean the public, for who they are being exhibited, getting disappointed. Unorthodox exuberance in a zoo may not really pay off since it is more or less likely to be met with pessimistic discouragement. Captives grow to become supervisors who will take care of younger captives, ensure they are not dissatisfied, give them a chance once in a while to be closer to the public, of course with a coach trained in handling captives in between to ensure that the captives and the public get along well and to cover up for skills which they have not acquired being in the zoo [and never will].
Life is easy, but you may never attain the skills to step out into the wild. If you don’t intend to take life too seriously, since you will anyway not get out of it alive, go for it. But, you may always run the risk of getting thrown out of the zoo if the parent company decides to set up the zoo in a different country where the captives do not demand as much food as you do.
The Wild Jungle
Typically, Pure bred Indian ventures who have pioneered the off-shoring model. Life is anything but peaceful. You will live life on your terms. You will have to compete with the other wild animals to get food which definitely tastes better since there has been a considerable amount of effort and time spent to get it. You’d have spent time strategizing on how you can get the meat and eat it too knowing that the other wild animals out there are equally smart. You may not be as privileged as the zoo inmates in getting visibility and exposure could hurt too. But, at the end of it all you become a smarter animal and are respected for what you are in the jungle. Visits to other hunting grounds could come at shorter intervals, which is a rewarding experience [in every respect]. Being unorthodox in the wild could mean developing special skills to achieve goals which could become a matter of pride.
Wild animals grow up to become the rulers of the forest. The forest may be segmented to facilitate focus of related skills to achieve a common goal. There is a lot of scope in the forest to grow, to learn, to be respected. There could be a little pain at times, but then without pain there is no pleasure. The Jungle is the eventual melting pot.
The growing obsession for social networking portals among the current breed of entrepreneurs and the VC community in India is something that I’d never been able to appreciate so far. It looked like a passing fad to me which would lose steam soon, until I read about two networking sites [US based] Damsels In Success, a networking site for professional women and, Playboy U; a non-nude networking site launched by the same group who come up with the lustful periodical.
Though, Playboy U is not about social relationships around common interests of people, Damsels in Success is. It is just that my corrupt mentations about Playboy helped me concretize the point I am trying to drive here about Verticalized social networking which revolves around common values, visions, ideas and interests of people. Consider the Indian scenario, our population, the fact that 50% of our population is below 25 years and are internet savyy, can there be a better playground?
So far, we’ve just had horizontal networking portals in India meant for a generic set of people like college students. There is so much space for segmentation of this horizontal into verticals, say portals only for music lovers, movie lovers, photography and so on. And then when you are part of so many of them, there will be a need for one portal where you could access all your other portals [the way meebo works for IM’s].
I strongly believe that a B2C venture is relatively easier to manage than a B2B one. It consumes moolah but most of it is for commoditized services like branding, advertising etc which are not part of the system and are not entitled to a share in the final loot. I know I am sounding like a capitalist here, so what? If the name of the game is to make money, doesn’t smaller and leaner mean bigger?
The Social Networking space is here to stay and should witness a lot more action, probably till people re-discover more personalised ways of social networking like Kitty Parties, Rotary Clubs, Lion Clubs, Carrom Clubs etc. Hmm ?
This is one of the best advertisements I have seen oflate. Does it spell trouble for start-ups dabbling in the social networking arena?