Month: January 2021

Core Values of a company

Great companies have certain set of fundamental core values that usually dictates their DNA and Way of Working (WoW).  Usually these values get set over time and are usually set for a long horizon, and maybe there is one value that gets changed every once in a while as they go through some change, either internally through some acquisitions or mergers or through external environmental variables like a globalization of the company or when they have to adhere to a changed corporate law or something.  In any case, having a set of Core values for a company is essential for a competitive advantage and also to showcase their identity to the world.   Some of the common values that you usually see in many organizations are diversity, integrity, safety, excellence, fairness and of late, community which talks about a greener planet and corporate social responsibility.  So, how do these values get set? When people talk about culture of the company, what does it actually mean?

   A process in which this gets defined is usually from an attitude that reveals itself as some consistent behavior pattern which morphs itself to a set of values which with some commitment gets to be the culture of the company.

    A good way to start is when the organization is transforming itself from a startup phase to some growth phase.  The founders and the top management would certainly have some opinions that they have cultivated over time in their professional and personal front and this may be a starting point as to how the organization gets weaved. These opinions are just bucketized as ‘attitude‘ which reveals itself as a behavior from the person.  I want to emphasize that the connotation of attitude here is everything positive that spreads within the organization and this gives the head start of what is to come for the organization as they grow. 

    Once these behaviours, which are things that you and I do on an everyday basis, gets to be more consistent and seems to reveal a pattern within the organization, these can be the core values that your organizations can start off with.  Values are the interesting qualities that are important to the organization that all stakeholders breathe day-in day-out.

     Many a times, just because the organizations needs to have a set of values , it gets published from the top and they are set to be followed as a general guideline across the organization. This is totally wrong, you have known companies like Enron and Lehman Brothers for all the wrong reasons, and I am sure they would have had some credible set of values published within which obviously nobody followed.  The point to emphasize here is these set of values has to be constantly re-iterated within the organizations and they have to be something everyone can live by, in both their professional and personal lives. 

    Values must not be confused with (technical) competencies the organization has and hope to acquire which is literally your market place advantage.  Do not try to fit in values and have the organization stick by it as this would be a disaster waiting to happen. The best way to do this if to have a value workshop every couple of years from a good subset of your best employees and have them evolve the values to mean what one lives by at that point.  Or one can take a survey across the corporation.  It is reasonable to change a value here and there every 3-4 years to ensure you are consistent with the behavior seen but definitely not a good idea to change all the values every few years as this destroys the complete DNA of the company.  Whenever there is an acquisition or a merger or a change event, it is good to have a relook at the values to get consistency across the larger corporation.

    Good companies have Values inscribed in your badge behind your photo ID so that you can always refer to them to reinforce your behavior.  Values are the long term identity of the organization, and as I said, one must be able to take it home and live by the same set of values in one’s personal life as well. During the orientation of new employees and during their integration, it is critical that one emphasizes these values over and over again so that it gets instilled in every employee.  This would lead to a general commitment to behave in a particular desired way.   Commitment is sort of a guarantee to do something in a desired way and this is great for an organization. 

     Once you have the commitment, a good company can actually map it back to the performance appraisal process which must consist of two parts: the What and How, with equal weightage.  The ‘What’ defines the results orientation of an employee and maps against the performance objectives achieved. The ‘How’ should translate back to the Values of the company to be consistent with the behavior that one wants to see within the organization.  For Example, if an individual achieves excellent results and exceeds all his objectives, but at the cost of disrupting the team when ‘team work’ is one of the values of the organization, his performance assessment must need improvement and not be graded as successful.

   Now we have identified a process where an attitude showcases behavior which sets a value that gets the commitment from all. If you are this stage, I would say we have a culture identified for an organization which is just a set of attitudes and beliefs or way of working that is acceptable within it.   Yes, I said Attitudes, which means which can be a cycle in itself. Your attitudes initially would have originated from the set of values you grew up with, the cultures or geography you were brought up in, and of course, the best of practices you have seen around which you have slowly adopted as something that you want to identify yourself with. 

    One point that I want to make before I wrap up, for which I have got some mixed reaction, is ‘customer’ can never be stated as a value.  I have seen customer as a value in almost all companies now, be it customer delight or customer satisfaction or anything, but I would say NO organization can be in business if they do not have any customers. This would rather be more a metric to be measured.  I would rather state a value that would be an expectation of a customer like excellence and integrity, which may be harder to measure but something that reveals as a behavior.  A value has to be applicable for both internal (employees, management) and external (customers, vendors) stakeholders.

Are Shopping Malls dead in India, thanks to Mobile and Internet Technology?

Digital sales are slowly replacing physical sales.  Multi brand multinationals will not have it easy in India as this may be too late for these brick-and-mortar giants to enter the market.  Without an online strategy in place, their entry would not be very attractive for the youth who seem to be the regular shoppers now.  The internet shopping in India is here to stay and would only improve from here and if not the way to go, would be a strong alternative for the normal shopping in stores. 

   We already know that Metro has its limitation due to ‘political’ pressures in competing with the local small time shops.  IKEA is announcing its entry with some ‘forced’ restrictions and will not give the look and feel of IKEA elsewhere. .  Walmart has been waiting and waiting for a long time, initially by setting up an alliance with Bharti who already have the local Easyday shops.  Now with problems at the top with the CEO resigning and everything, something does not seem to be well at the top and hence with Wal-Mart itself in India. 

    Personally the frequency of visiting Metro has diminished to once or twice a year from once a month couple of years ago for me and my friends– the reasons being the distance travelled as they are situated in either North or South of our city, more instinctive buys that results in large bills, not much of variety in the store as they seem to carry only the hot moving items, not much price differences now between even an Easyday or a MK Retail and too much crowd. All these factors disappear when we buy online as we buy only what we want, gets delivered at home and price is better.

    The question now is: Is India having the Walmarts, the Ikeas and the Carrefours too late? Do these huge all-in-one brick-and-mortar retail megastores make sense in this day and age? Where do we have the real estate to establish these huge megastores in an area where people have easy access to? Is this going to be a dumping ground for cheap quality Chinese goods into our market? Most importantly, are they going be better in quality at the same time cheaper in price than what exists today?  This is key for them to flourish and maintain the same global standards that they are known for and they have to source locally as well.  They definitely would give a run for the money for stores like Big Bazaar, More Super stores, Star Bazaar and Reliance Mart which is definitely needed as what we get from these stores is not worth the time and money spent there and I sincerely hope we are in for better service which is totally not in the charter for our Indian counterparts.

    With the boom in internet shopping, is it really worth an investment for these stores and is it really worth our time as customers to venture into one of them, but for the fun and excitement of seeing a huge megastore where you get everything and get getting trapped in getting produces that we do not need just because it is cheaper than outside. With technology, should not the world become smaller as it always has been – remember when airlines were introduced, over time, global travel has shrunk in time.

    Our shopping brains are thinking different now and would evolve to getting the next hot fad, at the best price, delivered at our home after an in-house trail – why travel the distance in this maddening traffic and with escalating petrol prices?  

    There is a great way to get the right products and this would be through the VAS route if the phone operators can come up right applications based on context, location and social means.  The mobile ads are already catching up now in India and it is time to focus them to an actual sale.  Yes, depending on the place we are, through GPS, we can be attracted to the right place to get what we want, which is based on a match with a shopping list application that we have stored in our mobile and that informs us that the ‘time is now to buy it’.  This would be Nirvana.  This way we address only our NEEDs and not our WANTs.

M-commerce growth and trends in India (as opposed to how many have internet connections and total population):

  • Population of India in 2013:  1.239 Billion (Ref 1)
  • Mobile internet growth surpassed  more highly monetized desktop Internet usage in May 2012 (Ref 2)
  • There were 904 million subscribers in October 2012 according to TRAI out of which only 78.7 million were Mobile Internet users (accessed internet on mobile at least once a month) and projected to be 87 million by Dec 2012 and this is expected to double by March 2015 to 164 million. (Ref 3)
  • In India, e-tailing has the potential to grow more than hundred-fold in the next nine years to reach a value of $ 76 billion by 2021 from $0.6 billion in 2012. The growing broadband users along with mobile Internet users will drive this e-tailing story. (Ref 4)

   With the slashing of the 3G data prices by almost all leading service providers like Airtel, Idea and Tata Docomo, and the decrease in roaming charges suggested by TRAI,  this trend is very healthy and we hope to see lots more data flowing on the mobile internet.

   It is important for any E- shopping site to have the following – secure way to transact, trust of quick delivery and quality guarantee, ease of returns, and a good touch and feel.  The last of these, touch and feel factor, is the one that would attract anyone to a site and make them comfortable to shop inside due to that site being attractive, being relevant to what one needs, being easy to use, has a good graphical interface and has a ‘virtual trail room’.  The security part has to be enhanced and must be foolproof and every step must be taken by the e-tailer not to sell our information to anyone (in India especially this has to be implemented stringently – how else can you explain the umpteen garbage messages that flood your mobile with offers?). The quality must be equated to ‘what you see is what you get’ with no aberration whatsoever and no replacement without your knowledge, and also return policy has to be free, fair and easy. Every step must be made to return the stuff to the courier itself if this is not suitable after a quick home trail, and this means the delivery must be more specialized to include return delivery too.  Right now, most of us go for Cash on Delivery (CoD) and if the charges are extra for the CoD, more than half of the e-shoppers drop the idea of shopping.  E-tailer enjoys as they get the cash or credit before or as they sell the product, which is the best business model to be in, as this was what made Dell popular – they deliver the computer only after you make the order and sign your credit.

Some of the top E-tailers online in India:

    There are three types of online shopping sites – Focused, generic and marketplace type.  Although there is a thin line between the last two in terms of their offerings, it is better to classify them different.

  • Focused (Niche):  A customer usually logs into this site for a particular product (for ex. wines from Four seasons), or a particular brand (for ex. Reebok or Bodyshop) or a particular segment (Zovi for clothing, BeStylish for footwear, etc.).  Many retailers who have a brick-and-mortar store have an online presence and if you one who buys only from the same store or brand, this may be the site you would go to.  This type of site with the particular segment concentration can easily expand into other areas in due course and become a generic store (like Flipkart did beyond books).
  • Generic Online Mall:  Somebody who carries more than one segment even a mega store where one can shop for most of the items you would find in a departmental store, such as Flipkart, Infibeam, Myntra.
  • Marketplace (Bazaar type):  This is more like a hosting site for different vendors to put their products in and can be sort of compared to any travel site like MakeMytrip from where one can buy any airline tickets and accommodations- both work on some commission basis, such as shopping on Rediff, Tradus or Craftsvilla.   Here the seller is verified by the ratings given by the online store and these ratings give the end customers the confidence to buy stuff from them – it is important that customers give the feedback for very purchase made.

Here is a list of some popular websites today in India for shopping online: (disclaimer – these not necessarily an exhaustive list)

  • Myntra (www.myntra.com) – identified as a clothing and footwear website and carries only brand name apparels and shoes and accessories.
  • Flipkart (www.flipkart.com) – started off as an online bookstore and Indians started using it as a Noun for any online purchase of any kind, sort of an Amazon equivalent for India.  Right now they called themselves an Online mega store and offer electronics, appliances, clothing, footwear and watches to name a few. But when you say Flipkart, the shoppers associates them only for books/e-books and then for mobiles, laptops and toys. They did try to do an Apple store replica by selling mp3 digital downloads through their Flyte store which they closed down couple of weeks ago. 
  • Landmark (www.landmarkonthenet.com) –  they are into books, mobiles, cameras and toys and this is one shop that started off in the late 80s as a brick store and have managed to get into online as well which gives them an advantage in terms of  30+ years of retail experience. They are presently owned by Tata group.
  • Infibeam (www.infibeam.com) – I would say they are Flipkart competitors and give the other companies a fight for their money in their pricing.
  • Snapdeal (www.snapdeal.com) –   Again competitors to Flipkart and Infibeam.  But may a times, they do not honor their commitment and got for refund which is pretty good. I am assuming they are not able to handle their vendors well.  This is a back side route that Ebay is taking in India indirectly as I see it and they are also major funding partners for Snapdeal.
  • Homeshop18 (www.homeshop18.com) – A generic mall type like the above three, but has an added advantage in having a shopping channel on TV.
  • Jabong (www.jabong.com) – they are again into fashion, furniture and footwear.
  • India times (shopping.indiatimes.com) – a Times of India Group Initiative that carries a wide variety of things online.
  • Rediff (shopping.rediff.com) – more a marketplace concept where lots of small businesses offer their products for sale to customers. This is one site that asks for shipping charges for each and every item which can add up eventually.
  • Zovi (www.zovi.com) – a clothing and accessories only store with their own brand names and slowly adding more varieties of clothing and accessories.
  • Tradus (www.tradus.com) – a marketplace store that sells a lot of products with some good deals on a daily basis.  One of the worst customer support site based on my own experience, where they have not even bothered to reply to my umpteen emails for a defective carpet they sent me.
  • Amazon (www.amazon.in) – Debuted in Indian market just this month. Their Junglee concept has not taken off the ground and slowly evolving into a comparison site. Amazon itself may be too late to enter the Indian market, but since they are loaded with cash, they would be ready to buy some established players and consolidate their position – I can never write them off.
  • Yepme (www.yepme.com) – more positioned as a competitor to Myntra offering clothing and footwear.
  • BeStylish (www.bestylish.com) – a footwear and accessories specialized store.
  • Big Basket (www.bigbasket.com) – grocery and household goods store doing same day delivery.
  • OfficeYes (www.officeyes.com) – an office supplies company that sort of focusses only on SMEs.
  • Bookmyshow (www.bookmyshow.com) – an online place to book any of your movies, events, sports or theatre tickets.
  • Fourseasons from UB (www.fourseasonsvineyards.com) – sells wines from Four Seasons online.
  • Watch shop (www.watchshop.in) – sells branded watches at challenging prices.
  • Craftsvilla (www.craftsvilla.com) – a bazaar type store that sells crafts and furniture from artisans from around India.

As for the incubation of which city leads in establishing such online store, Bangalore has taken a lead here by seeding the Myntras, Flipkarts, Zovi, BigBasket etc. whereas Infibeam comes from Ahmedabad.  They usually have warehouses in few cities from where they ship items to the customers or deal with the manufacturers directly to get the product for the customer.

 What Indians are buying and how?

Travel constitutes nearly 3/4th of all the commercial transactions that happen online for B2C.  The days where we used to get our travel arrangements made by Thomas Cook and other local travel shops are getting numbered. Now one can buy bus tickets on redbus.in or ticketgoose.in, train tickets directly from irctc.com or yatra.com, and air tickets either through consolidators like makemytrip.com, cleartrip.com, goibibo.com or yatra.com, or directly for any of the domestic and international airlines, directly online. These consolidators are a better way to look at the options available and they pretty much give the same price as the airlines themselves. Also they are great to choose the best time of departure/arrivals, airline, lowest layovers, price, etc. If we can get the forex part online somehow as well and have it delivered at home, which is already there with most of the banks as long as you have a relationship with them, then we are all set to travel abroad just by sitting before a computer or a smartphone. Travel insurance can be taken online and procedures to get visa is listed for each embassy as well.  Based on the word of mouth, one can book for holiday packages and do what your friend or family recommended and once you have this covered, we can book them online as well.  And with a site like TripAdvisor, one can land up in the hotel of your choice based on real reviews from real people and in the price range one can afford.  So, pretty much the entire travel plans but for the actual travel can be done online.

While we grew up with ‘analog’ cameras with 24 or a 36 roll film from either Fiji, Konica or Kodak, we were so fascinated in taking photo prints of our travels or special occasions, in either matte or glossy, in either 3.5 x 5 or 4 x 6 and have them inserted into photo albums for sharing with friends and family. Whereas now except for printing passport or visa photos or wedding albums, nobody knows or interested to know such a place like a photo studio exist and we are all busy sharing the digital copies of our photos online or through social networking sites to let others know about your travelogues instantly.

Footwear:  The online stores that enable any footwear purchase are Yepme, BeStylish and Myntra.  The footwear names like RedTape, Relaxo, and even the sports shoes companies like Reebok have online presence to buy their products, either by phone or through online directly.  The problem with buying shoes online is the fitment – simply put, across the sites, the nomenclature for UK vs. Euro vs. US sizes differ.  So, if one is happy with a particular brand and knows the size and shape they are comfortable with, then this is easy to shop online for the best deal.  Otherwise, the old school of trying it in a physical store would be the best.

Perfumes and Cosmetics:  This would be an interesting online experience – although you can buy them online, you do not know how they actually smell.  Looks like IBM and some other companies are working on a technology that allows our nose to sense smell and be able to buy online.  We have always grown up by knowing that once we sniff two or three strong aromas, the nose does not get the rest right after that – this is why when it comes to perfumes as well, tried and tested works – the couple of names or flavors you and yours have accepted well is the best thing to shop.  It is recommended that duty free shops are the best places to buy perfumes and not even online.

Clothing and Designer Brands:  The non-travel, non-business e-commerce is pretty much in this area and almost every player competes here although Myntra for brand names and Zovi for its own products are well known.  I feel that Myntra today is a trend-setter in the way they are retaining the customer and playing the price factor by sending individual emails now and then.  And also since they sell quality products from brands around the world, customers do not even wink before they buy.  Also their delivery has been impeccable – always right and on time.

    Flipkart is also into clothing now although they started off as a book vendor and it is difficult to change the mindset of old customer as they associate Flipkart mostly to books and electronics.  The opposite effect would also be true if Myntra starts selling books, I would be reluctant to go them at the cost of Flipkart. Hence the ‘niche’ segmentation applies for e-tailer in terms of what ‘mind space’ each e-tailer occupies. 

    Government enterprises, like that of Jharkhand (www.buyjharcraft.com), some established silk sari stores like Rasi, Nalli, etc. as well as clothing megastore like Shoppers Shop  have made it easy for customers to buy their goods online.

Wines:  We have FourSeasons from UB and Kinvah Wines from Nandi Valley who already have an online store and they can deliver your favorite bottles home.  Some vineyards have detailed description of their products online like Grover Vineyards and Sula but not selling online yet – it would not be too long for them to do as well. Being from Bangalore, there are lots of wineries around the Nandi Hill and nearby areas which make good wine and may be easier for local population to get access to them as well directly from the manufacturer.   Since sale of alcohol is also controlled by state regulation, it is difficult to get a country-wide audience for the same as some states like Gujarat prohibit the sale of alcohol.

Chocolates:  Every local city have their own places to buy their favorite home-made chocolates  and in Bangalore, we have couple of places that I know of (surely more) – Chocolate Philosophy who takes phone deliveries and Rage chocolatier who have an online store.  Just like flowers bouquet (there are lots of florists online), the Chocolates are great gifts to be sent to your family and friends for their special occasions.

Toys: Flipkart and Landmark have a good selection but there are specialty online toy stores like Redbell that would make any purchase more fun for kids.  I wish Hamleys comes online soon, but the need of the hour is an online store which would make school life more interesting by making a range of educational toys available to purchase by the click(s).

Books (and eBooks):  The choices are many – Flipkart, Infibeam and Homeshop18 and Landmark to name a few. It is always easier to buy a book online as the same book does not differ from one shop to the other and the store that have it available and offers it at the best price wins the customer.   The old book houses like Strand and Gangaram are feeling the heat now unfortunately and stores like Sapna somehow are surviving with a good student loyalty base.  There is one retailer that is worth a mention – Landmark – they seem to have a good physical and online presence and managed to time the market right by evolving with the market condition. Strand has not been able to although they do have an online presence.  Take the case of CrossWord which is closing stores– they are not able to maintain their margins with their high cost stores.  Pretty simple, why should ANYONE buy a book at an expensive store if they get DELIVERED at a much lower price at home? 

Office stationaries and equipments:  For those SMEs, we have the likes of OfficeYes.com and PrintVenue.com that takes care of most of the customized needs.  For generic needs, Flipkart and others do have a wide range.

Spectacle and sun glasses:  Lenskart and GK Opticals seem to be marching ahead here.  Although just a small thing to do, and this is a great first step in ‘virtual trial rooms’, it is great to be able to try out different frames with your own face photo uploaded.  Then all you need to do a few selections, and the retailer comes to your doorstep with those frames, you can try them at home and select the one you need and pay for it.  Once you are done with the frame, you can have the retailer take the prescription for fitting the right glasses. 

    Like printers, where the printer is offered at a bottom price and the manufacturers make money from the cartridges, in prescription non-designer spectacles, the frames gets subsidized a little and money is made from the glasses.  It is important here to note that designer frames can be brought online for a much cheaper price as do non-prescription name brand sunglasses.  It is equally important to ensure that you go to the right place for the prescription glasses as even a small annoyance in the power can give you headaches literally. The good thing is you can get good frames to fit your needs independent of the place you get the glasses and get prescription glasses from an online store that has a physical presence too like GK opticals so that if there is any issue, you can go and rectify it immediately.

Jewelry and watches:  Again, I feel that this is an area that needs to grow and get more publicized as the market can be huge.  Some may ask what is great about watches, especially the classic analog ones.  For them, I ask have you seen how many Titan showrooms are there.  Watch is something, although it shows the same time in every hand, is a segment that can go from Rs 2000 to Rs 10 lakhs and beyond as well, depending on your affordability and fancy.  

     Many of the leading reliable pearl shops of Hyderabad like Mangatrai and Krishna, and jewelry shops like GRT and Krishniah Chetty have an online presence where they proudly display their catalog.     It still amounts to the fact that one can gloss over some the catalog items and need to visit the store to make the transaction.  But slowly there is a move from the stores that once your selection is done online, they bring the 4-5 jewels of similar kind home and then you can make a purchase sitting in the comfort of your own home.

Grocery:  I am sure within walking distance from wherever one lives, you would have a grocery store like Foodworld, More or a Reliance Fresh, or even a Hopcom that allows you to pick the right vegetables and fruits.  But for the lentils and the rice, that one gets for a month or so, either a discounted local store or the likes of BigBasket and ZopNow is a great asset – you do not need to carry these stuff home as they get delivered at the time of your choice and usually in a good condition (you can return if the condition is not acceptable) and on the same day.  Pretty soon one would have intelligent pantries and fridges at your home that informs what is needed regularly, connects it directly to an online store of your choice where you have the credit and it automatically gets delivered to you. The apartments we live in are getting smaller in size, thanks to the affordability (or lack thereof) we all have, and hence buying non-perishable products and storing it for more than a month does not make sense – in fact, more you buy in excess, more they decay.

Electronics and appliances:  Flipkart, Infibeam, Homeshop18, Snapdeal and Tradus to name a few are places you can compare and buy the right appliance, mobiles and laptops you need.  All seem to be working fine and have their own best prices for selected items and it is good for the customer to shop around between 3-4 sites before you get it delivered.   Specialty mobile retail stores like Sangeetha, The Mobile Store and Univercell all have a good online presence from where you can pick up your favorite phones.

Sporting goods:   Decathalon is a Europe based sporting goods provider that has established a niche market, both online and in physical store format.   More local online stores would be nice to have in this segment with a lower price point.

Home décor and furniture (includes Crafts):  UrbanLadder, FabFurnish and Cauvery – a Government of Karnataka enterprise (www.cauveryhandicrafts.net)  are three such sites that offer furniture and other craft items for customers to choose from.   Then there is a market place called Craftsvilla that offers products from across India from various artisans which looks unique.

Lingerie and inner wear:  This type of clothing does need some privacy to shop and what better place to shop from home either directly from the manufacturers like Lapeches or from clothing stores like Rediff and Myntra.

Entertainment tickets:  BookmyShow and TicketPro are good means to get tickets online for any event, theater or sports, and all the Cinemas like Fame, PVR, and Fun etc. have means to book your tickets online for any show within the next 2-3 days and choose your seats too.

Personalized gifts:  Zoomin, PrintVenue and other stores do cater to this population and this is a great idea for giving away corporate and personal gifts.

   I have not mentioned some trivial items like movies and music that are readily available either in media form or digitally online from various sources. Pharmacy and health care products are sensitive for online purchases, especially the prescribed ones and hence may not be a good option to do online.  That leaves Cafes, Restaurants and fast food and finger food joints and ice cream shops which cannot be experienced other than one being physically present there to enjoy.

   Something like HomeDepot that takes care of home needs (bathroom fittings, electrical fittings, lights, and construction related items) needs to happen in India so that our dependence on increasing labor in these areas can be taken care of personally with a how-to-do-guide – a nascent field for online growth.  And Education and related items would be a hot topic as Indians spend close to 30% of their salary for education of their children – this is another segment I foresee lots of changes happening and pretty soon only tablet will replace the umpteen books the poor students carry today.

    Think about the future malls as just warehouses or small fronting shops with just trial rooms and selected merchandise where you can also do online purchases of their own goods.   Every shop can even have an ATM-type front end which shows their catalog and one can just touch and shop then and there. The other shops I see in a mall of the future would be sporting places like bowling lanes, and lots of eateries.

     The biggest advantage is you can shop 24 x 7 and after you come back from office.  It can be done from your home in a relaxed manner without any stress and the entire family can participate in the purchase decision without travelling together.  The other advantages being comparison of the same product from various vendors and also better prices.

  With Mobile internet and Internet of Things (everything on the net) becoming popular, it is high time for late adopters to start getting into the net bandwagon now.  Selling directly online in India can get the wrath of the distributors and the non-brand stores as it eats up on their heavy margin.  But customer is king and this mindset change will happen through couple of totally consolidated online stores who have no baggage of the past to maintain. This would change the way we see and do things and hopefully the margins would be passed directly to customers as discounts directly from the seller and this is the day we would all wait for.

This article was compiled and written in 2013

Ref:

  1. EconomyWatch.com’s Econ Stats database – June 2013.
  2. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers have released a report on Internet trends around the globe for 2012 & 2013)
  3. IMRB i-Cube 2012, All India estimates, October 2012
  4. Study by Technopak, from TechGig.com

Are Aggregators just living the moment?

    It is the Uber and Ola that have come to influence us getting a cab nowadays. Or a Grofers to put the nearby grocery store together and offer you delivery at some minimal discount. Or a Zomato or Foodpanda who have their collection of restaurants that you can order from.  Or a Redbus to help us choose from various operators for travelling by bus.   Even some e-tailers are just marketplaces!

    Who are these folks?  Do they have any assets at all?  These are the new breed in business circle called “Aggregators”.  Putting it simply, they put everything in one umbrella for the customer to search and order but they do not own any of the assets, be it the cab or the restaurant or the grocery store. In old times, not very long ago, we called them “Brokers” who operates on a commission or the Middleman to facilitates trade – unfortunately  however you call them, they do operate on commissions and being in their nascent stages of business, they throw away the venture capitalist’s money in terms of discount to acquire more customers like you and me.   And overall this is similar to the ‘bazaar’ concept where many traders are lined up to offer their goods to customers like us.  At this point, they are not held responsible for the quality products being offered by them, be it a rude driver, or a bad bag of rice or food poisoning. So add ‘no responsibility’ as well. What a way to do business  – no assets, not answerable for quality(in a way), no products of their own except an app, no engineering development in them except for some web developers (which they can outsource) and purely only a marketing organization.

    This is all great for the customers now(personally, I am smiling) , but in the long run, once they get into some sort of monopolistic mode, they do have the power to increase price and take us for a ride (literally, yeah, with Ola and Uber).  Possibly.  But my own feeling is they cannot.  Gone are those days that any company can last that long and not morph quickly through acquisitions or other growth areas, because the technology is growing so fast they either have to adapt or perish.  Some other new guy with a newer business model would eat their lunch shortly… stay tuned.

     Who is monitoring the driver if he had not got his required sleep of 8 hours – what happens if a tired driver is at fault? Who is monitoring the time it takes to deliver food for you or its quality?  Who is tracking the part if the nearby grocer is getting rid of old stock (but not expired yet)?  The Answer is No One.  You can say “reviews”, but we all know how the reviews are done.  If you happen to pay the ‘premium service’ to these aggregators, your reviews is always above 4 out of 5.  If not, you are finished. It is somewhat like media – they chase after TRP and not deliver the news without bias.

       They say an Ola cab driver makes about a grand a day in India.  He would be making the same amount even if he had not opted for Ola but he has joined Ola which would keep him busier. 

     Why cannot the Uber and Ola have a stricter licensing law for the drivers – give them a stringent test both on the road and on road rules, and only if they exceed the standards, they are allowed to continue.  Pay their insurance premiums for comprehensive and third party liability to ensure protection of the customers. And check the condition of the car every six months and ensure they go through proper maintenance process.  These are some of the value adds these aggregators have to do to differentiate from others – they do not seem to want to do this.  So, sustaining this business model is going to be hard especially if you are living on venture capitalist money and not making any profits for years together.  And the differentiation between like companies is none – there is no USP that they can boast – if someone adds a new feature, immediately the next guy follows with something better.  The same situation exists even for e-commerce players here.  Certainly all these companies would not be Buffet’s babies!   But keep these coming, as we are ready for the RIDE as long as it lasts, LITERALLY.

The Author is a business and strategy consultant and a corporate trainer based out of Bengaluru, India.

First thing for Autonomous vehicles : Proper annotation

As the Driverless or autonomous vehicle buzz is going around, with almost all car manufacturers trying something on their own to create enough news around their activities in all the car shows, we obviously see more Driver Assistance coming up in driving, parking, etc.  A fully autonomous car plying on your roads, and believe me, this would be restricted only to a few countries where good driving habits exists and huge penalty is incurred for any traffic infractions, would follow a series of fundamental steps (there would be more than three but for our discussion I am limiting it to three) to make this happen over the next few years:

(i)                 Put a camera or multiple cameras on a car (called host car or the EGO vehicle) and drive around the entire town and outskirts mapping all possible videos and images

(ii)               Annotating or tagging or marking those images to give the objects seen in those images some consistent meaning (video would have lots of frames and each frame would have lots of images which includes objects outside of the host car) which becomes the data for future processing – this is a manually intensive task, and

(iii)              A distributed computing environment working on these large datasets to get trained (this is there the Artificial Intelligence – AI kicks in) and scores of models developed for various situations for the cars to interpret and make decisions on the fly by recognizing such objects and patterns.

On a granular level, any tagging would have to be done minimally (if not more) in three different groups:

(i)                 Static – just the road signs, road lane boundaries and foot path boundaries, everything out there that is limited to the road and parking spaces.

(ii)               Dynamic (moving) – over the static, other than the host car, it must be able to identify others vehicles, pedestrians and even animals (in certain countries where they freely roam on the road), and

(iii)              Semantic or Contextual (immobile) – like the objects that are part of a scenery like hills, sky etc.

    Having said this, all these activities are very time consuming and although there exist automatic annotation tools, its accuracy levels are so low that all the OEMs prefer to do manual annotations of all the images by themselves. Consider this against what Google can provide in terms of the 3D building view, its GPS coordinates that shows the road conditions across various seasons, its mapping facility and all the optimized algorithms associated with it, and we are slowly conforming to an entire picture set that every car would have that would be constantly changing every day. For Ex., some road gets dug up for some wiring or plumbing, then this has to be instantly disabled across all the autonomous cars plying so that there are no driving errors associated with this. Also depending on the road conditions, the lanes can change or be accommodative to changes which has to be instantly delivered into the brains on autonomous cars. Weather conditions, accidents, light conditions and intended blocks have all to be captured in real time, and hence this data has to be refreshed frequently every hour.

     I am sure with all this complexity, Google is sitting pretty to address this problem once for all, and be there to constantly give us the updates and sell it as an irresistible package that every car manufacturer will be able to consume down the road (pun intended intentionally). When it comes to autonomous cars, it is all about navigating (mapping) and positioning (absolute and relative to others) and both needs to be absolutely precise at any given point in time.   If the label is wrong, then there are serious consequences to the same (fatalities can happen if the trained car missed a cyclist in the frame!).

     Training these data to proper information that the car has to act on involves zero tolerance to errors as safety is the critical need here and so this machine learning using neural networks would have to be done rigorously and tested across various parameters and conditions before any logical usage of it in real time.  The output of the computing would be as good as the inputs one gives into the system.   In fact, it is also imperative that one may need to redo roads to accommodate autonomous driving, and this would include lots of capital expenditure by countries and human labor to do this.    The entire transportation system would become more intelligent and automated.

    All these data being captured by video, even in these times of fast internet, get hog the bandwidth and hence they would require co-location of servers to store and compute. Pretty soon, once autonomous cars are in place, it would not be too far before Traffic Robots take over a policeman manning the streets.

  Having talked about the annotation tool software, when it comes to licenses, there are two major criteria for choosing them: Duration and usage or users. First for the duration of the license, the software vendors would either have it temporary for a given period (say 6 months or a year) which needs to be renewed in full every period after it expires, or perpetual where the license is of indefinite period, usually all updates are free for the first one or two years and after which one needs to pay a fraction of the entire license cost every year. Second is how the usage of these software can happen which means either it is node locked to a client machine or floating in a server world which is nowadays usually in the cloud from where a license key is fetched. So, it is the case that a temporary license may work out more expensive than a perpetual for a longer period of use, and a floating license is usually more expensive than a node locked one. Usually annotation projects encompass many annotators using the tool, over more than 2 years as the amount of video feed is in the orders of TB every week. So, it would make sense to go and negotiate the best rate for a floating perpetual license from the vendor.

  All these are distant dreams that may not see the light at the end of my day. But still the research and the work resulting of autonomous cars would get applied into many other functions around you which would make life easier, I suppose. 

Infotech or Politics, good leaders take all

I have been talking to a few folks, seniors in the high-tech industry, in both India and USA for the past one month – checking both from my business stand point as what to plan for and what client’s needs, I have to be ready for, and also in a more general way. Here is how I can bucket these people in three slots:

(i) Ready to Lead (from the front):  I have seen many of my friends invent small

devices for COVID, or some application that make life easier for farmers to

sell in these down time, all in the click of a button – they have wilfully

taken this opportunity to lead and try to transform and do their bit to the

society as well. Form our client relationship, I see at least a few customers

not getting bothered (yet) but wants to invest in this downtime and stay ahead

when the economy turns around and new demands are created. They are ready to

engage with us both at the project level and augmenting key resources to push

their projects through without any hiccups. Couple of them asked us to take the

whole project and execute them now. They are ready to move fast now.  Bold Marshals. Salutes.

(ii) Wait and Watch: These are the folks

called “cat on the wall”. They usually say wait till end of June to

get a clearer picture and then come to us. They do have ongoing projects that

they can invest but something is not allowing them to open their purse strings

although they have not got any news one way or the others. They are ready to

move with caution. They are the careful treaders.  And

(iii) Looking lost kind: Nothing has happened to them, but still they have gone into a shell and gone negative in their outlook. No good reasons to back their despair but still sounding dejected and feeling helpless.  For them, they do not see any light at the end of the tunnel anytime soon and when we talk to them, we feel that they are so far from reality and not capitalizing on their strengths to move ahead. They just sulk and are told what has to be done for the gloomy days ahead. This is their attitude. Born losers.

      We have seen these three types in the political circles recently with the handling of the COVID situation, in the US or India or elsewhere, Governors or Chief Ministers, Presidents or Prime Ministers.  They get the people around them and work together in a transparent way forward. The leading from the front folks always win and stay ahead. I am glad and overwhelmed to see their optimism and their realistic change transformation attitude and how they have used opportunities presented to them to their advantage. Amazing. You can see a lot of world and corporate leaders being at the helm only because of this one strength of theirs.

As things stand, depending on how the public relations wave goes against China, led by both USA and Australia, in my humble opinion (and I want to be right ) India has a lot to gain both in the manufacturing and information technology front to come up with innovative products with high quality quickly. 

Vendor management – I

A professional services vendor, in this context, is someone who provides skilled resource for contracting or consulting to bigger organizations as and when the need arises. These vendors need to be registered with the organizations for them to offer their services – with the organization which requires their services, usually it is a vendor management team or a procurement team or even the finance team in the organizations which interacts with them. Tier 1 vendors here may include the likes of Infosys and TCS, Tier 2 vendors may include the likes of L&T Infotech and Tech Mahindra, and then we have specialized vendors who concentrate on niche areas like analytics or hardware or just CRM or ERP solutions to provide their services.

  So, when does an organization usually need the services of any external vendor? Some top possibilities when external vendors come into play are (but not limited to only these)

–     When the scope and duration of the project that they are working on or likely to work on, is low – may be a short-term project for a year or two after which they do not see anything beyond, sometimes called “filler projects”.

–     When they want someone outside their core competency to enable what they do, and do not want to grow in this particular area so that they remain focused on what they deliver best. Example being someone who delivers high quality hardware designs but still needs an IT infrastructure that enables them to store and share data, and hence they may outsource the IT infrastructure. It can also be food or transport vendors who work with the high-tech organizations.

–     When they are unsure about the outcome of what they want to try and have very little visibility or confidence. If they succeed, they may continue the project for a longer term and even add it to their competence, but if it fails, they want to cut their losses short and move on

–     When they have bursts of short term needs to complete some tasks needed for the execution of certain projects, or adding up to it

–     When they have big project, which requires huge number of workforce and they may not be enable to staff them alone with full time folks

    The business models that the organizations deploy with such vendors can range from just resource augmentation, milestone based delivery, and even outsourcing an entire low value projects (like support, which makes them to concentrate on next generation new products) completely to them, and it can be in either at the customer site or even at the vendor’s physical location as long as proper information and data security arrangements are met. Big companies usually ask for an ISO 27001 and an ISO 9001 certification from vendors for them to outsource any work being done at the vendor premises.

  The other areas in which external vendors are looped in would be

–     in the providing food and transportation for the employees of the organization which has been stated above and such vendors would be managed by the administrative and operations team of the organization

–     in the recruitment front where external consultancy agencies are looped-in to help in sourcing rich talents for organizations or in the training front where experts in selected technical domains are used to train employees, both likely to be managed by the HR team of the organization, and

–     in providing manufacturing assistance for the designs that the organizations create, be it an ergonomic chair or a high-end IC.

      There are definitely other areas where vendors are employed and there are other business models being used as well, which is not explicitly stated here but the rule of thumb of evaluating if one needs to use external vendors is based on duration of the need, the scope and the core expertise. Eventually it would be a decision of whether to budget it (for full time employees) long term or to expense it (for external vendors) short term, term being a subjective number here.

   In the next few parts, we will talk about some of the practices common in the vendor management domain and talk about transparency and better ways of working that would evolve with the automation era dawning now.

   We are Business Intellects, a digital age consulting, training, auditing and recruitment firm based out of Bangalore.

Manufacturing – the next big wave for India

Thanks to COVID, now it has suddenly thrown India into the manufacturing arena. Due to the perception that China has not been too forthcoming with the origin and spread of the Corona virus, due to their recent show of strength on Taiwan and Hongkong residents and along Indian borders, and also more importantly, Chinese banks and investors trying to buy huge stakes in corporations of other countries, the world order feels they may be capitalizing on other’s misery. Lots of conspiracy theories abound and not getting too much into them as that is not the intent of this article, it is a welcome sign for India to capitalize its manufacturing prowess and prove itself to be a viable manufacturing alternative now over the next decade or so.

   In 2014, the average cost of manufacturing labour per hour was $. 92 in India and $3.52 in China (Ref: GenimexGroup).  When labour costs make up a significant portion of cost of goods, lower labour costs do indeed lower the per unit cost.   Purchase cost is usually the most important factor when manufacturing overseas, but so is quality, delivery times, and ease of doing business, the three items that India has to improve on and impress the world on their capabilities.

    UN data shows China is the world’s manufacturing powerhouse, followed by the United States and Japan and accounted for 28 percent of the global manufacturing output in 2018. Lower costs of living make China’s low wages manageable for the common manufacturing worker, and their factories are thriving by producing goods for the entire world. China’s gross domestic product per capita is almost five times that of India’s, and its manufacturing sector is ten times bigger. India is the second largest crude steel manufacturer in the world after China but our output is a ninth of what China manufactures.  Even if India gains about 5 to 10% of the entire Chinese manufacturing portfolio, we stand to gain big. It did take China about 3 decades from 1980s to be called a Juggernaut in Global manufacturing.

   India has shown the world they can manufacture high quality automobiles (Hyundai exports certain models from Chennai), can make good leather and textile products that are export worthy, and of course, we have in built expertise in creating the best in class satellites, rockets, fighter jets and heavy armaments, We Indians can also be regarded as the best intellectual designers and developers as evident by the fact that we as a community shine in all other countries where we live.

   Now it is a question of self-belief and some quick government actions to turn the tide in our favours. Given the exodus of the migrant population to their natives due to COVID fears in Tier 1 cities, now is the time to use that population on less expensive towns and cities to start building factories and employ them at large, and this would also manage the explosion of the cities beyond its bounds that we are witnessing for the past two decades or so.     Putting a manufacturing base in and around a major city would increase the labour cost and bleed the already broken infrastructure in the cities, and hence it is obvious to choose lesser known towns near good ports and good access to rail network to develop them as smart manufacturing hubs.

 But let us not carried away as well – yes, we need Made in India to attain self-sufficiency in many aspects, but let us not miss the global bandwagon either – we should recognize and act to what the global needs are as well. Made in India should be rather Made By India and it has to be first Made For India before we go globally.  We need to build capabilities first, be it in terms of training and skilling, where the Skill Development councils (SDCs) can help. But we also need to go a little deeper in changing some of the higher secondary education into a vocational stream as well consciously to make the labour market more skilful. Winds of change are blowing for the past few years with more and more seats in engineering colleges get vacant as there are lots of alternatives for students to choose from. IT companies like HCL and Google do not even need a college degree for their talents anymore. Once we build such capabilities, and once we start manufacturing credibly, slowly poverty and homelessness decreases thus creating wealth and better hygiene across all classes of people. When wealth starts spreading, better infrastructure gets built, goods and people gets transported better, spending increases and the economic divide gets to improve.

   If you look at America after the industrial revolution, and Germany and Japan after the World Wars, it was manufacturing that got them to the top of the world last century– automotive being the biggest facilitator for this success across these three countries, and quick and easy transportation became their strong forte. The expertise mainly involves electrical, mechanical and electro-mechanical domains that made them world leaders in what they do. When you have an economy based on manufacturing, you would have credible assets unlike any software companies. You can even turn around perception of lower quality (the Hyundai Pony introduced in the USA was considered a lemon) when you start being a manufacturing country like South Korea did in the 1970s by giving exceptional products over time across the automotive and consumables products, be it the Hyundai or the Samsung now.

  Quality can never be an afterthought, it has to be built-in and this has to happen from Day 1 – as India starts its manufacturing, this has to be infused into the working culture. Japan had a Deming to make them Quality kings after WWII. Also speed of execution is key – getting something quick to the market is the best way to climb up and show case manufacturing leadership. Given that we have enough automotive expertise now, this is the best place to start – build WORLD CLASS cars and trucks, driver or driverless, petrol or electric and showcase to the industry that each component that goes into them can be built with high quality in India for the WORLD. This must slowly lead to building good planes, ships and trains and work in the infrastructure to link cities to towns to villages.

    Solar initiatives and battery technologies for all segments is something that India can showcase as a key strength and lead the world as well. Then comes the electronics segment where we have been laggards – it is time to establish some good Indian brands in the consumer product segment, be it smartphones or electronics and electrical appliances than can compete with the best of the world – yes, we can start being the manufacturing hub of established players but it is time we rise up and start building our own unique brands that we can be proud of. We have some good success stories from the TATAs-Voltas, and from Godrej in terms of HVAC and refrigerators that can compete with the best of class, but it is time to go much more.

   In all these, manufacturing usually is the biggest culprit for all environment damages with its pollutions – we should start the blue print with all environmental effects factored in and again not look at it as a post manufacturing fix. Given we have a heavy responsibility here, and with some credible ethical leadership, we can make all these happen within the next decade. Hoping to see the Indian flag waving higher and stronger.  We should be able to cover the entire spectrum, from a simple needle to a huge aeroplane in years to come.

 We are from Business Intellects, a digital enterprise era consulting, training and recruitment firm based out of Bengaluru, India. 

Martina’s Mantra

Martina’s Mantra

 Recently I read an article on Martina Navratilova, one of the greatest tennis players ever to have played the game, most fit individual every played, where she has said that everything that one does, is about what goes on in those 6 inches between the ears – MIND. Inferring, extrapolating and elaborating from what she said that performance is actually potential without the interferences, it is great to understand in depth her wisdom (in my own words now):

                     Performance = Potential – Distractions

    Potential is usually the talents one is born with that is unique to that person, along with appropriate rigorous training and good lots of motivation, both internal and external. Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, and Usain Bolt definitely are champions in basketball and the field, and some of their on-field exploits are beyond reason – just pure raw talent that they were born with. I am sure the 11 players selected to any national cricket team are not the only best players there are in that nation, but rather talents who had been identified and given opportunity to play at higher levels.   Your support staff, your friends and family and your entire team should be encouraging you always to give out the best performance day-in day-out.

        So, Potential = Talent + Motivation(Internal +External) + Training

   The missing part here is that Potential has to be identified. In corporate world, they get to see young leaders in action and constantly do succession planning. In sports or arts, getting opportunities to exhibit one’s potential is where the biggest problem is – some of it being at the right place at the right time. And definitely Lady Luck has to smile as well. If a BCCI committee member is observing some school tournament by chance and identifies a talent, he would be given more opportunities and focused training to hone his skills.

   Distraction in this respect is an inverse of focus – or a lack of it. If you want to achieve higher things in life, it does not come to you in a plate – you have to work for it. Yes, you have regular distractions that can be controllable but still never lose the eventual plot of gaining greater heights. That resolve to strike big, that focus to excel, that zeal to success should drive you to less and unnecessary distraction.   There have been many talents whose life and opportunities have been destroyed by excessive drinking, taking on to drugs or uncontrollable gambling, as they find it difficult to survive in the sudden limelight that they are thrown into, but who have taken care of it consciously have shone well.  Distraction is any time taken away for unnecessary or useless activity that can be detrimental to one’s success.

   Distractions = Vices + bad company + unwanted activities that one gets involved in + any unneeded interferences

  Hence Martina got it dead right by stating that your performance peaks when your identified potential delivers consistently and continuously (for a span of time, before age has a say esp. in high activity sports) and you are able to clearly use the time judiciously and are seen as a role model for many others to emulate. 

Can AI and Automation replace recruiters?

Are recruiters going to be replaced by AI and Automation? This is the question that has many posts now. Let me dig into a ‘rather -simplified’ process of recruiting before we can address this, I sure this is not as simple as this sounds though:

– sourcing is the first and critical part: this would include searching external databases and social sites for suitable candidates according to the requirements, weeding off unqualified candidates, ranking and giving prelim rating for the candidates

– coordinating interviews and any work assignments and tests that needs to be given for details technical fitment

– most important is the negotiating part with the candidate and influencing them to take the offer made, and to on board the candidate

When you look at it, the first step of sourcing and the tasks underneath it can all be automated and AI tools with good search engines with high accuracy can be used to get the top 10 candidates that would be the greatest fit for any particular requirements from the available database. One can easily automate the receipt of applications as well to go into the database through a proper document management system with adequate meta-tags. The issue is most of the large companies have made talent acquisition as a manufacturing process unfortunately with little human interfacing with the candidates before and during on-boarding and recruiters do not come with a ‘recruiting’ degree – still no college offers such programs. This step in the recruitment process has a strong probability of being lost through automation in my opinion in couple of years.

As for the second coordinating role, I feel even though the tests and assignments can be automated for particular job codes and some companies do the first level of interviews through audio and video bots, this step in the process cannot be replaced completely. But I feel technical hiring managers and the hiring team would mandate to talk with the candidates directly or through video conferences to get a feel of the chemistry of fitment. So, this responsibility of the recruiter, although can be automated, may not go that way as this would mean no human touch at all in the recruiting process.

And lasting the negotiating and influencing part would remain with the recruiter as this is where they give their return of investment (“Worth”) to the companies through their soft skills and situational leadership attributes. Good recruiters whom you see would be the one who close a candidate properly within budget and timeline and this is a skill that I believe AI cannot replace (or rather should not). It is more about the proper usage of your social skills that converts a candidate into an employee.

Having given a quick spin on what goes around with recruitment and AI and automation, I certainly feel the number of recruiters that would be needed would be lesser in years to come and these would be the cream of the available pool. I always believe that if you have to dig for gold, you need to go deep and mine for it and no automation can give an optimum result here unless there is a human element interacting with the candidates. But given a likely Post COVID situation though, where we would see more working-from-home employees who later would turn into ‘skill-based Just-In-time contractors’ needed for that particular job, less and less human interaction would take place for establishing an employee-organization relationship as the cultural fabric established through interactive across-the-hallway connects would all be things of the past – I hope this is wishful thinking but still worth analysing further and introspecting as to how the future workforce would actually look like if there is no physical office to go to and how recruitment as a role would have to morph to newer realities.

We are Business Intellects, a remote/virtual consulting, training audit and recruitment firm based out of Bengaluru, India.

Companies are accountable for transportation of their employees

Even if companies outsource meals & transportation, they would be held ACCOUNTABLE for anything that goes wrong in them, they cannot escape the noose. The vendors would be held RESPONSIBLE but still accountability belongs to the companies who outsourced. Remember that, there is a legal angle to it – responsibility vs accountability.
Having said that , I see lots of IT and manufacturing folks who enjoy the transportation facility not correcting their drivers for errant and rash driving – they seem to be unconcerned about the same. As long as they do not bother about traffic, they are fine – this is the sad attitude of the travelers. As a CSR initiative, ensure all the drivers have a proper license that is readily available for passengers, and reinforce proper driver habits regularly. If your driver is wrong and caused an accident, accept it – do not enlist the support of the passengers for your wrong doing.
Constant monitoring by health inspectors of the cafeterias should be done independently, and disclosed in public as a certificate every month or quarter for hygiene reasons.
Get accountable , companies – try not to escape from them. Do not turn a blind eye to bad food, unhygienic cafeterias and to rash and negligent driving. #CSR #accountability