Fringe Notes!

[fringenotes]

Tale of Interest rate, debt and Equity : Three Countries

Country used high interest rates to lure international capital (debt). High capital created growth which created high inflation. High inflation devalued currency thus making debt expensive. This led to balance pf payment crisis which in turn killed economy. Turkey

Country capitalised public sector banks. Banks gave huge loans to private enterprises. This debt weakened the balance sheet and made private enterprises unattractive to foreign capital. Banks being public owned, were not so prudent. The amount disbursed became NPA and it tanked the economy. India

The country used the capital to fund private enterprises as an equity investor. The equity inclusion by local partners led to equity investment by international investors. The pouring of equity capital in young enterprises boosted investments, created consumption and build world class organisations. This led to more and more international money coming in the form of equity which in turn created more growth and better returns. China

[fringenotes]

MY SOUL HAS A HAT

I counted my years 

& realized that I have

Less time to live by, 

Than I have lived so far.

I feel like a child who won a pack of candies: at first he ate them with pleasure 

But when he realized that there was little left, he began to taste them intensely.

I have no time for endless meetings

where the statutes, rules, procedures & internal regulations are discussed, 

knowing that nothing will be done.

I no longer have the patience 

To stand absurd people who,

despite their chronological age, 

have not grown up.

My time is too short: 

I want the essence, 

my spirit is in a hurry. 

I do not have much candy

In the package anymore.

I want to live next to humans, 

very realistic people who know

How to laugh at their mistakes,

Who are not inflated by their own triumphs 

& who take responsibility for their actions.

In this way, human dignity is defended 

and we live in truth and honesty.

It is the essentials that make life useful.

I want to surround myself with people

who know how to touch the hearts of those whom hard strokes of life

have learned to grow with sweet touches of the soul.

Yes, I'm in a hurry.

I'm in a hurry to live with the intensity that only maturity can give.

I do not intend to waste any of the remaining desserts.

I am sure they will be exquisite, 

much more than those eaten so far.

My goal is to reach the end satisfied 

and at peace with my loved ones and my conscience.

We have two lives

& the second begins when you realize you only have one left now.

by 

Mario de Andrade (San Paolo 1893-1945) Poet, novelist, essayist and musicologist.

One of the founders of Brazilian modernism.

[fringenotes]

Being Counter Intuitive & Running Democratic Govts!

Majority of decisions in life and business which leads to survival / 10x growth are counter intuitive. However Democratic Govt by nature of it, follow popular advice which is intuitive / common sense. So are democratic Govt designed to fail?

[fringenotes]

Dawn of digital : The end of Nation State, advent of Corporate State : Part I - Mind

One fine morning In India, millions of Android phone users (Google Mobile operating system), discovered a strange phone number in their address book which they have never entered. It was the number of UIDAI helpline, and all hell broke loose (UIDAI is managing Aadhar - a Govt run biometric program to create a unique identification system for all Indian citizens). Pretty soon, it started trending on Twitter with allegations flying thick and high. Privacy activists who are already highly suspicious of Narendra Modi Govt went on a super allegation spree. Is it Ministry of Electronics or Ministry of Communication or UIDAI itself or BJP govt (interesting nobody blamed foreign hand - the default culprit behind everything going wrong in India). However, all the outrage quickly died down when it appeared that it was Google which had inserted UIDAI contact number in phone books  (so it was really a foreign hand this time). All outrage on a state having access to phone books while no outrage while a private company incorporated for profit having full access!!

In another universe, some years back there was a huge uproar about NSA snooping over call data / accessing chats/emails etc. It created a huge uproar among activists/privacy champions and everybody questioned NSA who was trying hard to figure out terrorist activities. However, there has been no outrage or hysteria when same activists buy Amazon eco and use Alexa or Google assistant and allow the companies to listen to everything. Some activists believe that one can opt out from subscribing to these services and these are optional services. Really!!

Very recently, in a coordinated move, Apple, FaceBook and Google, all US companies governed by US laws, purged some ultra-right activist presence on their system as they found his content offensive. No first amendment/free speech protection worked here. There were hardly any voice protesting this move but rather applauses as the majority was not happy with that particular person. What if the leadership of these technology majors subscribe to some extreme ideologies or have the error of judgement? any scope of appeal or play of natural justice.

It seems that citizens have more freedom in physical space and access to the law but are just powerless data/revenue source without any right/legal recourse for all tech companies.

From a distance, it seems like the biggest paradox of our times, where we are willing to put maximum trust in the for-profit digital private enterprises but are deeply suspicious of Governments/welfare state.

The one reason can be related to the influence or control which digital private enterprises have on our life compared to the governments. While we are hardly dependant on the govt in conducting over day to day life, we literally can’t function without access to the digital world. Imagine for a moment where Facebook bans you and google does not accept you as you refuse to sign their "not another yada yada" terms of conditions! You are an app developer or an Amazon seller and one fine day without assigning any reasons, Google / Apple / Amazon can wipe your economic existence without giving even a hint or scope of redressal. Life suddenly can be very lonely or can have server economic consequences against which you have very little chance of appeal or redressal. Courts can do a little as you have agreed to those 40 pages of terms of conditions and knowing your senator/member of parliament won’t help as we are yet to build a knowhow to penetrate support call centres.

Interestingly while one shall expect Governments to be extra vigilant about the excessive power being enjoyed by these digital private enterprises, Govt seems to be either clueless or seems to be providing more and more powers to these faceless, unaccountable private enterprises who are getting more and more powerful thanks to the network effect. However, we hardly see any government action like it was done against AT&T etc in the early 70s. Interestingly governments seem to be totally oblivious to the danger and power of these new powerhouses as we have seen in terms of fake news or Cambridge analytics scandal etc.

The role of Russia in manipulating US presidential election is still being debated however very few have questioned the role Facebook played in influencing elections or pondered about the role except few meme or jokes. Any law being passed to limit social media control. What if there is an enemy within and some evil Dr manages the election using social media? So far, all focus has remained on Russia, but almost negligible measures have been taken to control or manage SocialMedia influence related to management of state/democracies. Already elections are being won or lost, people are being killed on basis of some rumours being spread on social media, reputation and livelihood of the digital population is being managed beyond their control while the state looks on in a confused state!  

Has the end of nation-state began and age of corporate state arrived?

Part II - Money

[fringenotes]

The Entrepreneur

मैंने उसको जब-जब देखा 

लोहा देखा 

लोहे जैसा तपते देखा

 गलते देखा 

ढलते देखा 

मैंने उसको गोली जैसा चलते देखा 

~   केदारनाथ अग्रवाल

[fringenotes]

Epilogue : Massive Earth Summit 2018

Summits are generally yada yada affairs with an opportunity to escape the routine and meet fellow industry people. There are always more people outside chatting away than inside. On top of it, being first event, the huge challenge of having delegates / speakers etc et.  The event management company advised subtly to have cocktail and dinner so as to hold guest till then and and oh yes do not have more than 7 sessions in day, with lot of large panels so as to handle last minute dropouts-was the the parting friendly advice.

Off-course with conferences happening every second day, one need a sure shot recipe for success, or what they say in bollywood - the perfect formula film.  

Somehow Massive Earth Summit 2018, first edition didn’t have any of it. No cocktails, no dinner, no management institute students to fill tables and no large panels. Well all sessions barring startup showcase, were one on one Q&A. Result - Sessions were packed till the end. On top of it, no speaker dropouts so instead of 6 suggested, we had 17.

Massive Summit happened in Massive way by a team which not only imagined but executed it flawlessly - ending the summit right on time at 7.30 sharp!!!

The first Massive Earth Summit was first in many ways - No plastic bottles, sustainable locally sourced food, no plastic badges, no flex side walls and a fine line of 38 speakers and some 290 delegates (1600+ had applied and 350 were invited). ( all this impeccable concept / design / execution was done by Gomassive team, Lemon Design and V Resorts.)

The opening key notes were delivered by Dr K VijayRaghvan (Principal Scientific Advisor, Government of India) and Mr Vijay Sekhar Sharma - Founder PayTM while The closing talks were delivered by Mr. Suresh Prabhu ji (Minister of State Commerce & Industry and Mr. Gajendra Singh Shekhawat ji (Minister of state for Agriculture & Farmers's Welfare).Some of the other key speakers were

Dr Anil Kakodkar -Ex Chairman Atomic Energy Commission of India

Mr. Manoj Kohli -Executive Chairman, SoftBank Energy

Dr. H Purushotham -Chairman & MD, National Research Development Corporation

Mr. Sanjeev Bikhchandani (Founder Infoedge)

His Excellency Mr Nils Ragnar Kamsvag (Ambassador of Norway)

Mr. Satya S Tripathi - Chairperson, Sustainable India Finance Facility, UN

Ms. Helena Molin Valdes -Head of the Secretariat, Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC), UNEP

Dr Ashok Khosla, Chair person - Development Alternatives, winner of King Zayed Award, life time achievement award by UNEP

Apart from the interesting sessions, we also had showcase by some 4 startups with very interesting technologies. The event created quite a buzz in media while the tag #massivesummit #massivebydesign #gomassive were trending on twitter. The notable mentions were Sand Art at Puri beach about Massive Summit and coverage of the event in TV - CNBC Away, News24, print and online media.

So great conference, massive buzz and great visibility! Now what ? Do we end up being a yada yada summit where people come and talk or while World in General and Delhi in particular battles with Air Pollution and climate change.

So Massive summit was the beginning of the war which we wage against these large problem. The summit saw the launch of Massive Design Challenge -

https://www.massivedesignchallenge.org/

, which allows people from all across world to summit their solutions regarding large challenges. So pls do apply and you can win upto $250,000 to build your prototype / solution.

And we just didn’t stop at Massive Design challenge but also launched a 1000 Cr ( $150mn) fund, named Massive Fund with Vijay Sekhar Sharma -UN Environment's Patron for Clean Air. This fund will solely invest in Pollution reduction industry.

Some of the fund coverage

LiveMint - Mint NewspaperVijay Shekhar Sharma, Shailesh Vickram Singh unveil green fund

https://www.livemint.com/Companies/XEjEvqk1HJ8kdyvAcj2bSJ/Paytms-Sharma-venture-capitalist-Vickram-unveil-green-fund.html

Times of IndiaPaytm's founder teams up with venture capitalist to invest $150 million via green fund

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/venture-capital/paytms-founder-teams-up-with-venture-capitalist-to-invest-150-million-via-green-fund/articleshow/64471738.cms

The Economic TimesGreen Fund: Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Shailesh Vickram Singh set up $150 mn fund

https://cfo.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/green-fund-vijay-shekhar-sharma-shailesh-vickram-singh-set-up-150-mn-green-fund/64481943

YourStory Paytm’s Vijay Shekhar Sharma co-launches $150-mn environment protection fund

https://yourstory.com/2018/06/vijay-shekhar-sharma-launches-massive-fund-150m-fund-green-solutions/

So hope to see you at Second Edition with some solid startups / executions and cleaner environment

Till then

Hello Massive, 

مرحبا ضخمة, 

你好大量, 

こんにちは

שלום מאסיבי

Shailesh Vickram Singh 

[fringenotes]

Why Flipkart-Walmart and Tata- Bhusan deal will put India on the path of 10%+ GDP growth

There have been numerous presentations, articles, columns since late 90s about India’s potential and how India can be a super economy in time to come. With the rise and rise of neighbour China in last 10 odd years to unimaginable levels, this dream has not only bigger but also look so close and achievable. Unfortunately despite getting billions of Dollars as FDI in Indian economy, we are yet to see a China level growth. In the world of a friendly Institutional investor - "the Indian story has remained a story so far".

However while all experts / economies have been debating about growth rate of India in next 2/5/10 years and why this iOS not possible based on rear view mirror data. Two mega events which happened quite silently and without much hoopla, are now going to change path of India forever and will finally put India in auto-bahn of economy growth.  These two events proved that finally after a lot of errors / mistakes,  India seems to be finally getting its act together. For the first time a GDP growth of 9% or 10% does not seem such an impossible dream.

The first mega event which grabbed everybody's attention was acquisition of Flipkart by Walmart for $17 billion. This deal was the biggest deal in the world and gave not only 400x plus returns to earlier investors, but also made founders richer by $1 billion. While it was fantabulous deal for investors and founders, it was even better for Indian eco system. 

From the time Indian VC/PE story started, there has been one single complaint by investors of all shapes and size and that is lack of exits. Money just comes into India and never goes back. Of late, the momentum of exits have started ( it started by RedBus when Seedfund made an exit, as Naspers acquired Redbus) but Flipkart had remained worrysome as it had absorbed almost $7 bn and almost anyone with even a tiny India interest, had some exposure to Flipkart either through direct investment or through being investor in the funds which had invested in Flipkart. This liquidity event of $17 billion is going to erase a lot of doubts and will pave another wave of capital hitting Indian shores. 

The other bigger question which this event answered was if India’s amazon would be either Amazon or Flipkart. This question has been adequately answered now by Flipkart, Ola, Paytm and host of others. Despite no barriers or walls, Indian startups have fought and fought well. Two of my investors asked me last year as to why Indians don’t buy from Flipkart and what will Flipkart do? I have told them that India is country of surprises so please wait and don’t be so fast in your judgement! So bottom line is - cheer up! India will have its share of Indian startups as well as global model startups and some will win in both categories. So keep calm and keep investing. 

The other bigger or rather far bigger mega development which happened last week. Surprisingly this mega event didn’t create same level of excitement as Flipkart deal but will have for sure a 100 times bigger impact than Flipkart-walmart deal. Tata Steel bought bank defaulter Bhusan Steel for agreeing to pay some 37,000 Cr ($5.5 bn) to bankers. One may say, whats the big deal if a loan defaulting company has been acquired by lenders and sold to a bidder. It might be routine in any civilised and democratic society but is almost a miracle in India. In indian banks there is a popular proverb - In india, companies go bankrupt not the promoters. They continue to live a lavish lifestyle and loot the public forever. As per last available data, Indian banks have a gross NPA of INR 8.41 lakh crore ( $125 billion approx) which amounts to around INR 16,000 per person if one account working population of India. This NPA is not because of bad business environment but is more a function of fraud, questionable business practices and questionable lending practices. Govt banks with no accountability and no skin in game has squandered public money with abundance. India real estate survived mayhem of 2008 financial crisis and there was no correction in housing because of govt banks who kept on rescheduling loans and waving NPAs and kept builders happy. 

This liberal loan policy didn’t mean that every business was getting loans liberally.  It just meant that people with connections and huge liability were getting loans while ordinary businessmen were still making rounds and rounds of govt bank officers to get even a 10 lakh loan. This insider networks where everything moved on connections not only looted the banks but also crowded out genuine businesses. Due to massive NPAs and with no hope of its recovery, banks build this losses in their business models. No wonder we have deposit rates of 6% but prime lending rates for SMEs hovers 12.5% (non banking - this rates jump to 18% plus) as SMEs and saving account holders were jointly subsiding corrupt defaulters. 

This naked dance of last 70 years was put to stop by NCLT/ bankrupts law and resulted in first big win when Bhusan Steel was finally acquired by Tata Steel. There are some 28 other companies with big loan defaults and lot of pressure on promoters who otherwise used to run the system on their own whims and fancies. Already some 3/4 NPA accounts have been regularised and even unsecured trade creditors have started getting their long pending dues.

This cleaning and disposal of default assets is doing following things on the ground. First huge amount of capital which was already written off by Banks is going back in the system thus boosting profitability and stability of system and might even reduce the lending rates as risk spread will come down. Second it has created a sense of law among promoters who are now aware of consequences as it is no longer an empty rhetoric that law of land will takes its own course, and so these large drawdown of fraudulent loan no longer happen as consequences are severe. This will lead to opening this capital to the unconnected, honest and hardworking businesses in India who remain uncompetitive in the world market due to lack of capital as well as high cost of capital. Hence suddenly all the capital which used to find its way to big businesses and to the connected ones will go to normal businesses. 

There is a sense of belief that India is capital scare country and without foreign capital we will remain starved. While we all believe in this, we forget that same capital starved Indians also buy gold worth $35 billion every year. So India is not capital scare country but capital does not go to right areas due to issue of lack of legal system, crony capitalism and corruption which are build in last 70 years. These walls of corruption, crony capitalism etc have started to fall now. 

India in last 70 years has seen a culture of crony capitalism in its finest form where to succeed all one needed, was connections. These two events in summer of 2018 have demolished this theory forever and connections do not matter any more. The honest and hardworking get billions and defaulters ’s business get sold.

Gentleman, the age of India has arrived. 

[fringenotes]

Intuition vs Counter Intuition

Every disruption is driven not by intuition but counter intuitive learnings of the founder.

[fringenotes]

वर्गभेद और मानव समता

जहाँ वर्ग भेद की ज्वाला है, 

जहाँ मानव भेद की हाला है,

जहाँ अपराध भी बाटा जाता है A, B, C के भागो में,

जहाँ मानव भी आँका जाता है, वेतन के प्रतिमानो में, 

क्या वहाँ भी मानव समता का उजाला है ।

written in 1984, discovered in an old diary 

[fringenotes]

Announcing Massive Earth Summit 2018 : Cultivating Pollution as a resource mindset 

Block your dates -6th / 7th June - New Delhi 

Register at https://www.massivesummit.org

[fringenotes]

Farmers poor income : who is responsible - RBI / Gov / Middle-men? Fallacies or  Puzzles?

Farmers as usual for last 70 years, are in limelight and slogans have changed (Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan to Double income mandate), but focus and condition have not!

So why Indian farmers are poor? Middle men / Small land holdings / Lack of storage facilities,  Poor productivity - all of this combined or none of the above?

Issue is why despite so much focus and attention, farmers condition keep on getting from bad to worse? So some puzzles on RBI / Govt role

Puzzle 1 : Inflation targeting & poverty of farmers

1. Policy of Govt / RBI is to keep inflation rates low as thats is one of the key economic parameters
 2. Rise of food prices creates maximum havoc politically ( onions have led to loss of many govt, though don’t know as why Onion is such sensitive topic when its share in household budget is less than 1%. Media focus probably?) 3. So Govt works overtime to keep food prices low 4. India being an agrarian country, almost 60% of population is dependant on agriculture. Agriculture is food production 5. Remember Govt is committed to keep food prices low 6. That means, Govt is committed to keep income of these 50% of population low ( while all costs is education / housing / travel /health /  electronics etc rising) 7. So why it is a surprise that farmers remain poor. Remember, Govt and policy makers are working to keep prices low. So overall policy is succeeding not failing

Puzzle 2 : Interest, Inflation and elasticity of food prices

1. In India weightage of food products in CPI is close to 50% ( 14% in US, Singapore 16% and Japan / Thailand exclude fresh food from inflation ). 2. RBI is targeting inflation so one can that it is targeting food inflation given such high weightage. 3. Now food consumption shall be inelastic in nature for most of the items. Nobody start consuming 20 kg of onion or 100 kg of potatoes per month if pices drop to 50 paise per kg. 4. So how low interest rates will help in demand side. They might kill the supply side only. So is RBI killing supply side rather than managing demand side?

So are these fallacies or realities? pls point out counter arguments or what I am missing here?

[fringenotes]

Goodbye (regular) Venture Capital, Hello Massive !

I have spend almost two decades in Startups / Investments and believe strongly that venture capital is probably the best option as a career. And no it is not the glamour, or the usual challenges and interaction with new teams, new ideas day in day out and being in changing landscape every day / month / quarter but the real fun is in the ability to impact world in a meaningful way. 

Despite all the criticism of VC world - about loss making business models, utopian ideas and inability of many funds to out perform many indices or even return capital, the fact remains  that venture capital industry is one of the finest product of the dark ugly big capitalism. In no other models, interest are aligned so beautifully where motivated founders slog day and night while dreaming of changing the world by bits and pieces and many time succeed as well. 

Hence apart from those massive returns, the biggest contribution of venture capital has been its ability to change world, create hope in society and on top set an example of fairness and equal opportunity where one crazy passionate entrepreneur can change world and create wealth without resorting to all dirty underbelly tricks of capitalism. Hence I am not only proud of this career but am rather a staunch worshipper at the altar of this VC world which continues to dream big and aim big.

However as I pound the street raising my next fund with a good track record of success and failure, I have many time caught myself wondering about the big goals which drives me and the question which I ask all founders as what keep me awake in the night. The fact of matter is that the biggest problem which haunt me are no longer next big idea in e-commerce, deep learning, possibilities in B2B space or consumption  but rather the large and real problems of declining forest cover, sad state of water / sanitation, environment, polluted & choked rivers / ocean and our ever declining bad air which we are breathing in and out. 

Having set up an NGO (SAVEN) to protect environment at age of 18 in 1990s, I probably feel more strongly about it but despite all my hope, energy and commitment, fact of the matter is I am not doing any thing real about it and much worse is that all of us who can do something, are busy and excited about bitcoin prices, next food delivery company or doctor discovery app while (secretly) hoping somebody else to appear and save us from the coming catastrophe. 

The existing scenario of super charged investors, euphoric entrepreneurs and orgasmic enviornment was best captured by Adam Smith in supermoney. “We are all at a wonderful ball where the champagne sparkles in every glass and soft laughter falls upon the summer air. We know, by the rules, that at some moment the Black Horsemen will come shattering through the great terrace doors, wreaking vengeance and scattering the survivors. Those who leave early are saved, but the ball is so splendid no-one wants to leave while there is still time, so that everyone keeps asking, “What time is it? What time is it?” But none of the clocks have any hands.”– From Supermoney by Adam Smith. Today one doesn't need to be a climate scientist to figure out that environment is in deep peril. Oceans are silent, choked by plastic. Air is nothing but smog. Poverty is very well alive and kicking and petiscide has infiltrated every food system. However the response from all of us is more on a confused state where people look at leaders and leaders look at politicians and who only look at short term voters. 

The fact is that we need to solve this problem our selves as it is too important a problem to leave to others and hope for others to solve. Hence at this juncture of my life when I have the luxury to choose, and choice is available so my thought is as why i am not solving this and the fundamental question comes as if not now then when, if not us then who? 

As humans, we have created challenges for Nature by housing, transportation and food and now in turn chickens are coming home and we are staring at these big challenges. I believe that if we are able to drive talent, money & networks to solve complex problems, we shall be able to solve them. Google Driver less cars is such an example. To start with, we are looking at opportunities in Agriculture, Electric Vehicles & Storage, Pollution (Air, Water, Plastics), Renewable energy, Sustainable housing, Water & Sanitation and aiming to solve them by using science, technology and venture capital thinking of scale and disruption.

Hence time has come for me to say goodbye to regular venture investing space and say hello to Massive challenges, Massive efforts and Massive opportunities.  

Hello Massive, 

مرحبا ضخمة, 

你好大量, 

こんにちは

[fringenotes]

Why can't India fix its air or clean Cities!

1. Delhi Air is bad. well not bad, it is at Gas chamber level. 2. Long exposure can kill and present level of pollution is three times more than code red levels. 3. So you expect whole population to be running out of city in order to save their life!! 4. Well, NO, a few are tweeting about it while rest are like goats in slaughterhouse. Calmly waiting for the turn. 5. Little bit annoyance but otherwise business as usual while choking on Air! 6. So who is at fault - AAP (Govt)? BJP (LG/MCD)? Congress (Opposition)? NGT (law enforcer) or Supreme Court (Quasi executive these days)? Or Constitution of India ( the framework designer)? 7. Think hard before jumping to an option or forming an opinion? 8. For a moment think hard as who is accountable/responsible for Delhi Air? 9. Where does bucks stop and which official will lose his/her shirt or get suspended / terminated if things are not working? 10. LG / CM / Pollution control Chiefs / NGT Judges or Supreme Court!!! 11. In fact none of these. All of these have power to meddle but no accountability or no skin in the game! Promotions will continue as well as increments without any relation to the performance! So crisis keep on happened and we turn to most obvious / visible face and jump on it in the moment of crisis.  12. So the moment a crisis happens, we jump to blame the most visible/obvious option - Politicians the law makers. 13. Politicians are lowest hanging fruit to blame for any crisis but remember they are law makers. Given no of laws passed in India, they are working very well. so what is the issue? 14.  Again is Delhi Air only crisis, we the Indians are facing? 15. Look around - each of India city / town or village is crumbling? is it so all across world? Well no. London had crisis 60 years ago.  Barcelona was nightmare 20 years back but beautiful city now. 16. All countries / cities go through crisis but they come out better - in terms of Laws / execution / enforcement & punishment except India. We in India seems to be just going down and down on a bottomless pit in every city. Traffic chaos, law & order chaos, deaths by unsafe building, traffic accident etc just growing. No wonder India ranks on top on each of these ghastly metrics. Like any other country, India also try to solve every crisis by making law. 17. India starts with the law and then everything else becomes hazy. Take Rape cases for ex? how many prosecuted for Rape? how many punishments finally got done? Remember Nirbhaya anyone? Anyone got hanged despite judgement? 18. India administrative structure is a round musical chair where goal was “Rule” not governance. 19. Officials are appointed for short term with no long-term vision or accountability. 20.  And as officials frame rules themselves, they build zero accountability. The simple motto is all privileges but none of the risk or accountability.  21. In Mumbai station stampede, how many officials got arrested or suspended? 22. Look at NTPC boiler bias with 28 ppl dead, any body arrested? If it would have been a private entity, all directors would be in Jail but in case of public sector or Govt, ex gratia from taxpayers!! 23. Zero accountability / short term tenures  and appointment of generalist with little understanding of subject, create indifference.  Around us, all we see is simply a function of indifference and team of people busy calculating their next increment or posting rather than delivering real kick ass service. No wonder Swachha Bharat failed, Delhi is choking and there is traffic chaos on every road. 24. Coming back to Delhi Air, what is happening ? which officials is there on solving air issues? or rather which experts? 25. Majority of heads in the department which monitor pollution/air quality, have no clue or at best, have the same perspective as a newspaper vendor? Delivery of a newspaper doesn’t make you expert on world affair (though lot of Newsreaders wont agree!) 26. Officials will be there for 3/4 years and might get next posting in say Ministry of Culture and might have a stint in Ministry of sports before getting in pollution management. 27. Are they best person to take the call and advise top leadership? 28. Can any administrative structure without accountability, knowledge and long-term ownership can think strategic while it pays to be tactical? 29. So think again, worry hard and choke your lungs. Delhi air is not going to get cleaned by this Govt or any Govt 30. They are not designed for it. Expecting govt to solve pollution is akin to solving maths by chewing gum. 31. The problem to pollutions / air quality will be not be solved by any Govt but by private sector / startups using the innovation to bridge this chasm. Time to goMassive on these issues have come. 

#Massive 

The end

[fringenotes]

Startup Exits : An Investor’s Perspective

Startups Exit is one of the paramount issue in the VC community in India and also at the same time often overlooked or misunderstood by many. Fact of the matter is that scale / exit strategy determines the type of investor.

My presentation given at HeadStart Foundation at Delhi

Exit for Startups : An investor perspective from Shailesh Vickram Singh

[fringenotes]

Swachh Bharat, Delhi Air Pollution, Why Govt fails big time?

It is again that time of the year in Delhi. Monsoon is over, Winter (thanks to changing climate) is yet to come, but air is slightly cold and foggy. Noise related to pollution has again started to appear on social media time lines - Posts on Paddy stub burning, trucks coming, open construction etc. But fact of the matter is that winter of 2017 is going to be as much polluted if not less than winter of 2016 which was as bad as that of 2015. Before the hidden politician amongst us jumps and starts looking at performance of rhetoric driven AAP Govt, let us look at performance of another regime which is also trying to another big problem plaguing India and that is cleanliness in India.

PM Modi launched a drive to make India clean on 15th Aug 2014. Work started on a war footing with words backed by large budgets & media campaigns.  Govt has spent/allocated more than 26000 Cr ($3.5 bn) on Swachha Bharat since 2014 but there is hardly any impact seen on the ground. Despite 'in your face' campaigns, large money spending, the situation has not improved at all. Take a stroll in any of our marquee cities like Bangalore, Mumbai, Varansi, Agra etc and landscape remains as dirty as ever. Earlier there was just garbage all over now there is garbage with hoardings of Clean India! There are campaigns and big talk of toilets being built every where but in reality, everything is as it was prior to 2014 except an addition of storage room aka a dysfunctional toilet in every rural household and this futile exercise has consumed close to $ 3.5 bn in hard cash.Now  again before we start looking at failure of BJP and its inability to move things, we need to ponder and need to look beyond parties. Its not AAP / BJP / Congress failure but a failure of Govt or rather a failure of the way the Govt thinks. 

If one look carefully and analyse the way govt acts it will come out that Indian government rarely thinks in terms of performance, end result, or NPS score of target consumers / customers but always think in terms of money being spend / allocated and scheme names. This though process has led to a scenario where whole government thought process is limited to budget / cess / allocations & vanity matrices like 100% literacy, 100% village electrification (If 10% houses get electricity, its considered electrified for the purpose of govt record) and naming all such schemes after Nehru Ji, Gandhi Ji and now on Atal ji and DeenDayal ji. 

If there is any doubt on this line of Govt thinking, kindly look at advertisements released by various Govt under various regimes. It does not matter if advertisement was released by Jayalalitha or Karunanidhi, Mayawati or Akhilesh, Manmohan Singh or Modi, the template remains same.  Some scheme name, big photo graph of the leader along with data on quantum of huge crores being spent,  so many families benefitting, blah blah. Suddenly you wonder if there was really a regime change or the same set of people are still running the government under a different set of masks!

Hence If one looks at Swach Bharat campaign from government perspective, whole campaign looks super success full with  26,000 Cr allocated, more than 52 million toilets built, India is on way to become super clean. But the reality on ground is totally different. Was there any issue on the Govt intent? NO, Govt was as determined as it can be but core issue has been thought process where Govt can only think from budget outlays. Nobody focussed on fundamental problems related to toilets/sanitation and challenges related to it. 

Fact of the matter is that India is neither ready nor can afford western model of toilets. First there are no sewage system in any of the villages or towns and on top of it there is hardly any water. In India the difference between have nots and haves is just one simple thing - access to clean running water. Only rich and middle class have access to it while rest of the India battles for few liters of potable water every day. With focus on having toilets,  a person who was using 300 ml water in open defactaion earlier,  now needs 3 liter water at his house and this house has no running water no access to sewer lines and no place to build sewage pits. The house in villages are either interconnected or clustered together having no scope to build open pit system. Even if one builds an open system, what to do during monsoon flooding or filling of tanks in 2 years as there is no manpower working in these areas? So if one looks at the constraint on the ground - no water, no waste disposal system, the idea of “Swachh Bharat” by building toilets was DOA ( dead on arrival) however the whole Govt machinery just went ahead with the plan -  as it knows one thing best which is to create a budget and collect money for it. So whole Govt went ahead with 26,000 Cr in hand even without understanding the basic problem of sanitation and challenges related to water, disposal, treatment etc.

So again before passionate hidden politicians jump and start blaming Modi govt. pause and see what happened at Delhi. 

Delhi Govt in all earnestness appointed IIT Kanpur to do study and find out the cause of pollution in Delhi. The report which has its own serious flaws in methodologies / simplistic observations / conclusions,  was still adopted by Delhi Govt but none of the simplistic solution was implemented by it. Why? Simple reason is  that solutions were like 1000 cuts war on pollution rather than any big bang budget approach and to make matter worse the improvement would have showed by 2022 (election is in 2020). Since there is no big budget allocation, no ribbon cutting and no big hoardings, the report and solutions have been conveniently parked in a cold storage. 

So what is the solution? The only solution to all such problems is one that is delinking budgets from any action. Govt needs to think in form of solutions/ results rather than in terms of budgets and big bang approach.  For example in the quoted IIT Kanpur report, road side dirt in summer had very high weightage. A small team could have taken a cluster of Delhi and implemented changes to see if vacuuming the road and covering construction is creating any localised impact and what could solve this. Lot of A/B testing in startup parlance but with focus on finding solution rather than big bang talk with focus on election!. Likewise for Swachh Bahart, It would have been better if Govt had done trials on some select cities like Agra, Varanasi, Bangalore etc and figured out what is working and what is not working. Or in villages, focus could have been on building community toilets rather than at individual homes.  

Executing small projects is not complicated and there is enough talented manpower with the Govt in addition to the large budgets, but then small projects don’t get allocation or gravitas from the top. Further these projects can’t be run by politicians as they are tied to 5 year horizon and neither by bureaucrats with transferable jobs. This project needs people with long term engagement as well as skin in the game with suitable rewards as well as accountability and punishments. Until the existing system thinks in terms of a long term model with proper accountability and life time postings, India will remain refugee to musical chair policy making and will slowly decline to a hell hole in terms of quality of life in no times as policies designed for salvery don’t work in democracy on a long term basis! The end

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StakeHolder Value

Maximising stakeholder value has been worst driver of destruction all around us.

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