Global Manufacturing and Make in India magic

Too much intrigrued by the brouhaha of Make in India, I have been following the socio-political scenario globally and every political institution be it in the struggling European clusters, labour intensive Asian behemoths or in the uber mature US states, is rightfully allotting significant importance to one critical data to measure the political and economic success of the countries. Employment data. Rightfully so, the need to create jobs has come out as one of the paramount drivers to satiate the public outcry for progress and development.

“In a century, once, the youth gets to choose between respectable competence and ways of tainted wealth. One who is honorable and dedicated, holds the single element of success.”
Leadership of even self-sufficient countries, such as the Saudi Arabia which has been maintaining significant positive balance of payments for eons now has stressed the need to pursue the goal of job creation in right earnest. The creation of job is not only the creation of money and constructive chain of reactions but also a tool for countries such as India and China to keep its teeming youth’s energy constructively challenged in building a nation.

Since the industrial revolution, Countries have looked at manufacturing sector to create jobs through the government investment and mediation. It is the easiest and most plausible sector where the government through its investment can jumpstart the job creation process and see visible results from Day 1. It makes sense for countries like India and China, since they have such a huge demanding population coupled with the cheap manpower to give me the cost competitive edge.

The other side of the scale is also tipped as economic demand theory rules across. As more scope is presented so is the indulgence of the economies. The room for export is increasingly getting crowded and limited as more countries jump into the manufacturing bandwagon. Thus forcing countries to start leveraging their competitive advantage factors to attract investment and increase its product marketability in the global arena.

Russia, Latin American countries such as Ecuador, Argentina, Peru, Brazil and Middle East countries such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Israel leverage the wealth from their natural resources such as oil and gas and minerals. Scandinavian and Germans use their highly skilled manpower and some like India and China are using their access to huge demand of consumption and cheap manpower.

However, a special mention goes for countries such as Singapore and Dubai, who have built their prowess of people and propagating their efficient governance as a magnet for investments.

India has been failing miserably in these counts, it has neither been able to leverage its huge pool of intellectual capital nor has it been able to attract investors propagating its huge scope of internal consumption market.

Manufacturing in India has been trending on wrong path with no steering from the government. Indian made products can be only served to the purpose of internal consumption since it has limited scope of exports. India has to first fix the competitive disadvantages such as abysmal power cost, high capital cost, and crippled infrastructure from a governance and utilities standpoint and fill the void of superior technology in manufacturing. India needs to primarily work on making the domestic market lucrative for manufacturing sector, greatly for SMEs in terms of scale, profitability and structured governance.

The irony of the matter is itself evident when India is trying to position itself to the world as one of the largest consumption market to investors to look and invest in India but we are trying to fix the export sector more than developing the internal market dynamics of the country.

India has to first work on plugging its loops in the low quality product standards more so from changing the global perspective as they view Indian made products. From the sheer number which we boast of, the manufacturing sector would hardly require to export if it satiates the internal demand of 1/5 of the world’s population.
The government from a longer term perspective should look at developing co-manufacturing and knowledge sharing agreements with the Germans and the Scandinavian economies at the corporate level so as to develop and enable skill transfer to bring the Indian workforce at par with the global quality standards. It should also initiate educational and curriculum changes at the IITs and NITs and encourage steps and measures such as student transfers and invite lecturers and industry doyens of the advanced economies so as to develop the nubile skills at its germination.

Opinion : The Dollar as a Currency and its future

Indian government should look at developing the sector as a hub for developing homogenous product market, which can leverage the huge manpower to provide scale. Sure it’s a utopian idea, given the kind of fragmented political power centers are emerging at regional level. The idea of uniform taxation, standards of product manufacture, uniform regulations and laws, and inter-state movement across India would take an impossible convincing skills and humungous political will to be implemented.

The next step should be our focus on facilitating innovative technology. India has given birth to the disruptiveness, ‘Jugaad’ but it has failed to come up with new invention of core technology. Since long we have been dependent on the Koreans and the Japanese to bring forth inventions and Indians have been successful in replicating it by tinkering around and customizing it to Indian needs. We have been awfully brilliant in reverse engineering the products and bring forth the cheaper version of everything available in the market but shamefully none as a first except the Nano (being a fan of how it was developed, I had to mention it).

Oh I hear a snigger there, well, it would seem good to add, that a need of an innovative product begins with an understanding of market need. Importantly, the need should be fulfilled by precise delivery of the product, sieved through financial value, albeit, with a pinch of social brand value (Hope, you are happy egomaniacs).

Once the need assessment is set right, the product is a cakewalk. Today, the value emerges is in realizing the product outlay right and tailor it to suit the need to hit the sweet spot, e.g., Apple.

It is evident that judgement plays a crucial part in evolution of innovation and as always failures will form a part of the learning and growth. If we are to encourage innovation, then we also need to embrace failures and even celebrate them. In India culture, we hardly respect failures and we go a step ahead and ridicule them. This typical mindset will have to change to propel manufacturing ahead in India. We should look at encourage the innovation and start looking at valuing intellectual property.

SARFAESI Act, 2002 and the Indian Banking Industry.

Last couple of weeks has been good reading time going through the SARFAESI Act of 2002.

SARFAESI (Securitisation and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Security Interest) Act was formed for the banking sector (including financial institutions) to allow them to seize underlying security such as hypothecated, mortgaged and pledged collaterals, without the court's intervention in secured loans category. This is really refreshing as now banks can focus on what they were meant to do rather than focusing on building distressed asset teams or in other cases were outsourcing it to specialized firms. A great relief for the PSU banks as they never would have amassed the toughness for the part.

Just to look at the numbers the stressed assets at banks (NPAs + restructured loans) had increased from Rs. 0.7 trillion in 2003 to Rs. 5.3 trillion in 2013. Banketing the asset sale to ARCs was not helping the cause. The AMCs (Asset Reconstruction Companies) were not helping much than just being a way of government recapitalization to reflect on the bank's balance sheets (I hope we were not thinking to fulfill the Basel III norms through it, pun intended)

The ARCs were crippled by too many unnecessary and myopic regulations, hail the RBI and the financial lawmakers :P . Oh just for the record, Indians are known to spoil the broth by bringing in too many cooks… All  the time  without exception, especially with Government machinery works. The banks should have never delved into peeking what the ARCs do with the sold distressed assets. The system should have let the ARCs function independently and not mire it with short-sighted RBI over regulations.

The manner in which the sales of the distressed NPA's to the banks were executed was opening up the wounds formed from the banks frailty, majorly Public Sector ones.

Predominantly, the banking system has norms driven more so attributed to regulatory compliances rather than risk assessment, simple example being even though an asset getting redundant and after being overdue on for 3 months period is declared as non-performing, the law lets the bank provision the loss amount across for 4 annual balance sheets just delaying the booking it in the balance sheets.

However, in reality when we effect a sale of the assets then we book the loss upfront for the year. This has lead the banks to play smart and hold on to the assets on their balance sheet till the book value is optimal to sell the asset. The ARCs do not get the asset till they have nothing left to salvage anything as value. The ARCs were doomed and this actually send the ARC industry to cripple away.

Ideally, the banking system should look at bad assets sale exercise in a more commercial viable approach and not just for salvaging lost pride for meagre cash, which at times don’t care of the transaction cost of the deal. We need to act upon some issues such as bringing in rigor (forgive my American spell errors) for the provisioning rules for the NPA.

We should be immediately condemn the shortsighted nature RBI/ of the 2 year time frame given to the CEO's of the PSU's. Every CEO just focusses on trying to not be in any bad news (Sale of NPAs) and play the musical chair game with his/her successors. Their major is just to avoid any dent in the balance sheet due to sale of NPAs.

The other reason for the dismal performance is the debt recovery tribunals (DRTs) and the process errors in the bankruptcy process. The outstanding amount for the DRTs has been hovering around the 15% recovery in the last two years. The SARFAESI Act didn't help the cause and push the number merely by another 5-6%. Restructuring these ARCs is still a laborious and time taking one, which calls for bringing in professional skills and long term financing, both of which ARCs may not currently possess. Given the time and cost involved in this type of restructuring, only NPAs with very high recovery potential will be selected for this type of resolution.

Oh the rabbit hole keeps on getting deeper …..

RBI please bring some political will to reign in some sense about the Acts or recruit better people to effect loopless change.

Conundrum of Egypt - Turbulence and Rearing of Growth.

Abriged Except of my study:

I have been recently intrigued by Egyptian economy including the aftermath the economy went under, the dynamics of the interplay of the military government and the appointment of the new government. It was an interesting affair for me as it was one of the first in history where an economy of 86 million people with a GDP of USD 576 billion and a per capita income of USD 6,800 would go through a phase like this.

Looking through the statistical data, one would just fall in love with the behavior of the policy and non-policy matters when run through a Bayesian model.

Egyptian monetary policy has been focusing on stabilizing the price of the exchange rate which were critical to keep the interest of the international investment community afloat. Egypt has been on an economic trajectory very much similar to a country which I believe to understand in and out, India (considering this is my blog, have the freedom to say so :P).
Both the countries have been trying to control or rather balance the equation of raising foreign competitiveness, increasing the economy with flush income growth and promoting exports. The one divergence which they both were experiencing was the ability to infuse confidence of the larger countries on their own national currencies. India didn’t do well with a nonchalant attitude on where it exchange rates went to, compared to a Egyptian economy which were on their feet to guard its exchange rates including the build up to the turbulent times before the Crisis and thereafter.
What did the undoing for the Egyptian economy was the diverse price distortions it has experienced for decades, fortunately, the realization for the stakeholders of the economy about the distortion will bring about a relative price corrections which will help in the smoothening the transition and helping in formulating a mature social market economy.

We can divide the whole Egyptian embroglio into four stages:

1.      The build up to the monetary infusion (2003).

2.      The Interbanking exchange rate mechanism.(2005-2007)

3.      The Egyptian Crisis and Mubarak Government fiscal and monetary policy (2004-2009).

4.      The Recovery path stage after the Crisis. (2009-2014)

…..

Capitalist and Communist... Thumbs up, Thumbs down

Communism has known to be the direct opposite of the capitalists and the very concept of the ownership of any business in a capitalist economy is irrelevant. In implementation, it creates a controversy and clash of policies and actions. There has been a wave of takeover, some hostile and some amicable, of American companies by Japanese firms in the 1980s. The acquisition of Germany based Mannesmann by Vodafone in 2000 to the recent plethora of increasing private equity and venture capital firms and their acquisitions have often irked the social fabric of national pride and anxiety.

Social and Business Economists have highlighted the concerns which will intensify over the next decade, as BRIC and specifically Chinese state owned firms are on a inorganic activity growth radar. Chinese companies have recorded record numbers in terms of foreign M&As in 2010. They have been bidding for everything ranging from gas (Americas), oil (US) and electricity (Brazil) to cars (Swedish Volvo).

The very idea of communists buying the companies of capitalist is a disparity as far as economic theory of liberism is concerned. This is what has been irking the Repulics and the Democrats alike. Take a 2009 story, where the National Energy Administration (US) agreed to establish a special fund for China's state-owned companies to buy oil and gas firms overseas. The beneficiaries being the Petrochina, Sinopec and CNOOC, which enabled benefit in terms of low interest loans and direct capital injections.

Chinese companies were seen as an example and epitome of state capitalism. Economic
factors like emerging world's non credit culture and the huge reserves of public saving, their resource wealth and the collapse of free market model led to a hailing of state capitalism. The value of the globe’s emerging stock markets have risen fivefold ($80,000 billion from $14,000 billion), taking the emerging market share of global equity markets from 31 % to 55 %.

The so called first world has coped up with countries such as South Korea and Singapore, who have been on an acquiring spree of companies outside their countries. The developed world has the experience of tackling the rise of mercantile economies but China stands apart, it is already the world’s second biggest economy, and in another two decades is rightly poised to overtake America. Chinese firms, till the outbreak of recessionary times, have looked inwards. The rising oil prices and the recessionary pressures on the US have made them potential targets for their vast resources abroad. Nothing could be more apt then the case of Unocal.

China stands fifth in outbound investments globally. Unearthing the pages of history shows that both Britain and America had shares of about 50%, in 1914 and 1967 respectively at their prime of supremacy. The biggest weight on the scales will be the Chinese rate of government investments powered by the per capita savings of the people. These monies today are invested in government bonds and treasuries of the first world counties; tomorrow this will serve a pool which can be used to buy companies and insulate the Chinese people against the first world countries currency devaluations and financial defaults.

Taking a cue from the chapter of globalisation, very similar to the old way of annexation of countries, a company (country) tries to inorganically for primarily three reasons: secure raw materials for future production, acquire better technical knowhow and the most important, to gain access to foreign markets.

In a normal situation, private companies around the atlas, find and allocate their
resources towards the attainment of perfecting its strategy to maximize its customers base.

These are governed by market and economic logic. So far so good, now the idea that an communist government might dominate the realms of global capitalism scenario is
unappealing. The very idea of shift in the control of global resources to an body which would not be market driven but official driven, an establishment principled on politics (principle, if you please) and not profit are the real concerns. Developed countries like Australia and Canada, which were once open for takeovers from the foreign countries, are now escalading the barriers for Chinese, especially in the arena of exhaustible resources.

China has been most active in deal making for the natural resources, yet its way off the needed quantities to control the rigging capacity of the markets for such commodities.

The Americas, Australasia and the Europe should consider subsidized capital of the Chinese. The major focus in these terms should be dealt with strengthening and plugging the loopholes in the competition law rather than trying to stop the investment flow, thus constraining the movement of capital around.

Taking the example of Geely, the new owners of Volvo. It made complete sense for both the parties. Geely had been trying to launch itself into European markets but was losing on the pricing factor and Volvo was in deep crisis since it could not find distribution partners in Asia to sell its cars. Volvo's existence was threatened due to its inability to sell more care in Asia.

CNOOC was one of the greatest finds of Warren Buffet n the last century. Chinese firms are believed to come with a lot of perks such as lower operational costs and access to newer and fresh markets to otherwise flagging companies in the saturated markets. In BRIC, Indian and Brazilian firms have the maximum advantage of being the free and open market policy adopters. But China is catching up fast . . . really really fast.

“This is a time for bold measures. This is the country, and you are the generation.”

I have been quite quiet for sometime now… Reasons galore.

I have been disturbed and have done some serious background familiarity work on the current state of affairs ranging from issues to Bring Back Black Money to India Against Corruption to Next Prime ministerial candidate and till the recent Delhi rape case. I have been off late been disturbed by these issues which are non-economical in nature per se but have a strong bearing on the economic, political and the strategic turn our country is going to take hereon.

 I will narrate a small story before we delve on the issue: On the 60th Birthday of our country, hearing a famous anthem which said,

 “There are two India’s in this country, One India is straining at the leash, eager to spring forth and live upto all the adjectives the world has been showering upon us, the other India is the leash.
One India says give me a chance and I will prove myself, the other India says first prove yourself first and maybe then you have a chance.
One India lives in the optimism of our hearts, the other India lurks in the skepticism of our minds...
One India wants, the other India hopes. One India leads, the other India follows. These conversions are on the rise, with each passing day more and more people from one India are coming on the other side. And quietly when the world is not looking, a pulsating dynamic new India is emerging.”

 A friend (Deepak) from a small town of Ballia, Uttar Pradesh (Bihar) called me and said, “Bhai, this is our story. You are One India and I am the other India, and I am crossing over.” He had apparently landed up a job in a growing Indian IT company and wanted me to help him settle down in the city of his new job. 

Deepak did well for himself in the company and adapted to the lifestyle of a city. Later, I shifted out of the city and had minimal contact with Deepak during those days. Deepak got a promotion and his location was shifted to Delhi. He called me emphatically about the good news and added that his marriage is on cards and gave me a stern direction to be present at his wedding.
Finally in 2010, Deepak got married and shifted to his new apartment in Kirti Nagar, Delhi. Since then, we both have been busy with our lives, hardly catching up with each other.

In Oct 2011, I was elated to meet Deepak in Ballia after almost two long years. While having lunch on a charpoy, I asked him about his job and till when is he in Ballia. He got upset and said, “Forever”. . . . . What had transpired after his marriage was shocking. His wife was targeted by some local political ruffians and often was teased on the roads. On bringing this to Deepak’s notice, he had a scuffle with the guys and was put behind bars. Deepak’s parents had to come down to Delhi and had to go through the ordeal of all the process of getting him released. Upset and Scared, Deepak’s parents made him quit his job and return back with them to his hometown, Ballia. Deepak now runs a computer training institute in Ballia. He often rues the fact that in 2012, he would have been sent on an overseas onsite project for 5 years.

That brings to the basic question of sociology about the evolution of a civil society. If a society feels insecure, what does it do ?? According to History, “this is the very seed of revolution, on which civilization evolves and leapfrogs into a metamorphosis stage”.
TRUE… we have seen this happen recently in Egypt. Today with the advent of social media, we (Society) have so much to broadcast and voice over. It gives us an opportunity to live a pseudo life where we have a microphone and can exercise our freedom to speech and expression.

The question which is relevant today is, Does signing an online petition on the Facebook Timeline and share it with friends enough to bring a revolution? Is sharing a status or changing a profile picture to a black dot to show solidarity with the victim enough to make the government kneel down? Does cursing the government for its inept actions or non-delivery of speedy judgement enough to ensure that from tomorrow rapists will dread the action?

While returning late from office on a Friday, I was caught in a tiny traffic jam because a candle vigil was passing by. Intrigued and curious, I too got down to see the intensity and wanted to walk a 100 metres. The vigil was a mark of protest against the govt and was to show solidarity about the unity of the public in terms of the Delhi Gang Rape.
It really skips my mind as to how many of us really know, think, or even understand an issue before we pass comments/ expert advice on the matter.

In an attempt to put the numbers in perspective, India’s has an average of 88% literacy youth rates, and it’s a pity that we still remain to be of the herd mentality. A survey carried out during the India Against Corruption agitation reported that only 9% of the agitators knew what they demanded, why are they protesting, and what changes would be effected after the implementation of the Lokpal Bill.
 India currently has been going through a lot political and social upheaval, a lot of interest and increased participation from the youth in waging campaigns and protests. The underlying fact remains that majority of the agitation are comprised of flimsy people, who get active on weekends for a get together.

 The obvious question which I have come across every time I have shared my mind, “Why don’t you tell us what should we do???”, and I have categorically replied every time, “ India needs shepherds and everyone is happy being the fleet. My boundaries of advising ends here, I only ask you the right questions, answers is something which you have to seek. Remember, there is no Right or Wrong, but only avoidance”

I would also like to add that this post goes out due to utter frustration, disgust and helplessness from an individual, who is shameful at his inability to change things. Taking a leaf from a philosopher in his own right: “This is a time for bold measures. This is the country, and you are the generation.”

 Jai Hind.

Mobile VAS and its implications.

This article is a follow up from a recent interest in a friend’s career scope.

Off late read an Gartner report which declared that the active mobile connections in India will exceed 920 million by 2016, which closely convert to a penetration amount of 73%. According to a telecom report in January 2012, the active mobile connections in India has already reached to 665 million and the total mobile subscriber base stands at 908 million. The Average Revenue Per User is also scaling up for all the operator and reaching close to Rs 220.

I have been trying to understand the changing dynamics of the mobile operators and their increasing focus on VAS. The kind of money which is finding its way through the route of VC funds and PE investments is crazy. The institutional investment scenario is yet to catch up for this space.

Last year, the mobile application market was valued at INR 4.5 billion. This space which was just three years back a predominantly mobile operator driven market, where invariable all apps were developed by their captive development teams.

The stakes on the tables have turned since then. The mobile VAS revenues in India has crossed the mark of INR 122 billion, as on March 2011. A study done by Deloitte expects the market revenues to reach at least INR 480 billion by the end of 2015. A lot of contribution to this development would be from the ballooning mobile advertising and increased demand and supply dynamics of the mobile apps space.

Interestingly, another space is expecting a humungous increase in its scope of business, the analytics industry. The analytics firms are already flooded with contracts which would dissect and enable mobile industry to start focused and targeted advertising. The customization of usage has increased the leverage on individual taste and preferences, according to location and interest. The Deloitte study also revealed that the number of mobile advertisements served in India is the highest compared to rest of the world figures.

Another study which was conducted by a mobile consultancy firm in 2011 came out with interesting insights that only 14 million mobile users access internet through their phone. The reasons are galore right from ranging from the unsuccessful 3G space and the unmet promised speeds from the mobile operators who blame the dearth of bandwidth for the situation. The most accessible space today will be the mobile advertising space which has more access and the attention span than most other mediums today available with the marketers.

The revenue that telecom companies earn from data services comprise just 12% of their total revenue, which is among the lowest in Asia. SMS is responsible for the biggest chunk of data revenue and is followed by music downloads and GPRS. A recent Edelweiss report was of the view that "the biggest impact from the roll out of mobile broadband services would be on data services as it would attract new players, change role of existing players, transform existing revenue sharing models and proliferate new services. Thus, the whole ecosystem comprising content aggregator, content owner, application and software developer and telecom operator will see a major shift in business models.”

The PwC study also highlighted the biggest impediment in the sector. The E-commerce space is still at a nascent stage and the sector overall is suffering from the lack of reliable payment mechanism. Due to this reason, the mobile network operators make 70% of the revenue and content providers account for only 30%. The further development of the consumer’s maturity n the transaction and the trust factor will propel the sector to newer heights as the content providers will automatically retail apps directly to the consumers.

Well this is dedicated to Jeevan, may you grow and prosper in the sector. God Bless.

Sources: www.pwc.com/en_IN/in/assets/pdfs/publications.../vas_landscp.pdf

http://www.deloitte.com/assets/Dcom-Global/Local%20Assets/Documents/TMT/9314A_Mobile_Reports_sm5.pdf

The World of Debt and Default...Part 1

I need to apologize to have just fallen out of the radar. It is important, at times, to just sit back and watch what you have been doing for a while... jot down notes feverishly.. and take stock. The current global scenario also warrants the same, and I would advise our world leaders to do it, Simply because, "It works!!!".
I am back again, and am getting straight to the focuspoint, Greece.

The most talked about topic in around the world is right now the sovereign defaults. The whole brouhaha over the uncertainty involved in European crisis, epicentering Greece.

Interestingly, the first of its kind (sovereign default) also started in Greece in the 4th Century BC. At that time, Greece was governed through small city-states, who had incurred a huge default on the loans taken for state governance from the Delos Temple. This instance of default was neither previously experienced nor encountered as the kingdom/states earned their revenues from trade, extraction of natural resources such as mining and a huge chunk coming from the war booty. The kingdoms simply did not believe in borrowing from the public institutions.

The fact that a state has to be reliant on borrowings underpins the power of the state, and vice-versa its economic and military prowess underpins its power to borrow has not changed. As the conception goes, a powerful (read: economically and militarily superior) state will never borrow.

Now with the changing times, we have come to understand the power of leveraging and so do not see loans from institutions like the IMF as a sin, but a Default is still considered to be the ultimate foreign policy sin, and a sin enough to effect a dire change in the geo-political balance of power.

The concern needs to be highlighted because the default risk, which we might experience, is specifically coming from the developed world countries. Greece is surely the first effective domino in the spread. Portugal, Spain, and Ireland are to be the next in line of casualty. The domino effect is definitely going to bring a lot of pain in terms of stagnant growth, consumption downturn and the ripple effects of the default to countries like Germany, France, the UK, and the US.

The next question which instantly fleets my mind is, “When the big boys are going down, shall we see the emergence of a new developed world (A new world order)?” or in a more Bollywood ishtyle, “Kya picture abhi baki hai, mere dost?”

Well, I think that this time we are going to see a dramatic shift in the geopolitical power mainstay. The Emerging world would be the savior of the world from this mess. I would also not refrain myself from saying that, the kind of widespread default which we are seeing in the West would undoubtedly have a devastating consequences even for the Emerging world too. I would also like to mention a point of my Chinese friend, a student of Economic History in Berkeley, with whom I concur. She thinks that sovereigns who have had floating currencies (not the ones with pegged currency rate), a manageable domestic currency debt, and a Central bank, whose policy making is uninfluenced and independent, have been seen to have negligible credit risk in peace time, a contrarion to the Mundell–Fleming model.

As of record, all the earlier country debt and default crises which we had been through in the last 500 years had more to do with the kind of financial and monetary structural rigidities, an unsteady state of political affairs, military coupe, and severe unprepared shocks and eminent losses such as wars rather than what we are now dealing with; Primary Headline Debt and Deficits.

....to be continued.