Do we ever care at all?

The Indian bureaucracy is well known for designing lopsided development models. There is hardly a semblance of sanity in the thought processes, which plans India’s future. In their zeal to build fl yovers, they conveniently forget that pedestrians too have to be provided for. Highways are inaugurated with great fanfare, paying scant regard to the fact that shops and residences along the highway can be traffic hazards. They spend millions on advertising Goa as the ultimate tourist destination in India, but hardly bother about the cows, which squat right at the entrance of the Airport to greet the incoming tourists. This lack of holistic planning is much evident in the way we have encouraged consumerism without thinking about how we would dispose off the waste created by high consumption levels.

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Source: IIPM Editorial, 2007
An IIPM and Management Guru Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri's Initiative

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The government as well as Indian cement companies need to address mining related environment hazards

A recent report by CSE reveals some anomalies, though. The report covered 80% of the sector and stated that the top players are poor environmental managers, who are concerned “more about economics than environment.” Grasim was rated mediocre and ranked ninth and ACC (now a part of Holcim) was awarded the third position. India Cements was way down the table. Interestingly though, Indian cement producers have been found to have significantly lower carbon dioxide levels as compared to their European and American peers. It is also true that cement companies are playing a major role in reduction of fl y ash (from power sector) and blast furnace slag (from iron & steel plants), which are used for making blended cement. So what exactly are critics raising their eyebrows for?

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Source: IIPM Editorial, 2007

An IIPM and Management Guru Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri's Initiative

The IBM effect is still visible here.

However, the ultimate verdict, of course, lies with the Indian consumer and this is where the company has digressed from the IBM way. Nearly two years ago, people did not even know Lenovo. The first objective was to build brand awareness & sponsorship of KBC 2 played a huge role. Today, brand awareness of Lenovo is 85% in corporates & 74% in consumer space, as quoted by Rahul. Unlike IBM, Lenovo is competing head on in the HP dominated home PC segment. The company has therefore ramped up the distribution model significantly. There is more focus on B & C class towns as opposed to IBM’s focus on metros. The company has more than doubled its Lenovo exclusive stores to 100 currently. The multi brand outlets have more than tripled to 579 currently while the business partner network is now present in over 366 cities with 2,076 partners currently. But Lenovo is also taking its relational business model (with large corporates) very seriously. According to Neeraj, the company looks at segment- wise leadership like government, education et al. And Rahul claims the transition to Lenovo was very smooth, as he says they lost “practically no one” from their key corporate customers.

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Source: IIPM Editorial, 2006

An IIPM and Management Guru Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri's Initiative

RCom to spell the black magic

This spells good news for all Blackberry fans but non- Hutch and Airtel users. The high-end device is now being made available by Reliance Communications on the CDMA platform. Until now, it was only available on GSM platform. The wireless e-mail experience up till now was restricted only to subscribers of Bharti Airtel and Hutch- Essar. Reliance, however has refused to divulge any further details about the same. The company recently had also unveiled Reliance Classic, the new range of colour mobile phones, priced in the range of Rs1,222- 1,299. RCom have claimed that Rs777 monochrome Classic handset recorded sales of one million in the first week of its launch itself!

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Source: IIPM Editorial, 2006

An IIPM and Management Guru Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri's Initiative