The Hindu Business Line : Shaken for sure

Devika, Brand Bangalore is definitely shaken. I do believe Brand Bangalore has been built bottom up, primarily due to the effort of the IT industry and its many clients worldwide. The brand is largely a B2B brand, and damage control is therefore that much more manageable.

Some fall-outs for sure:

External clients who are more politically correct than correct will want a security vetting of employees on their account to be more thorough. This will not be spoken of overtly, but expect a lot of action on this covertly for sure. No client would want his account associated with terror and its breeding space.

External entities in markets such as those where we have had some India-bashing in the past, particularly the US, the UK and Germany, will see this to be a good handle to use at appropriate moments. We in Indian IT businesses need to be pro-active on this account. I do believe industry bodies such as the Nasscom, CII, FICCI et al have a role to play here to avoid the cascade of any kind of negative sentiment.

Anybody who wants to bash up Brand Bangalore has now a handle to use. Little do these entities understand that every city in the world is a ripe enough location for terrorism and the terrorist at heart to breed. As an aside, with my international clients, this link of Brand Bangalore with Brand Terror has been a talking point. Most conversations in the last ten days have included some reference or the other to it. Some have been just checking up, while others think it polite to refer to it, quite like talking about the weather in good old Bangalore!

In the era of globalisation, do co-operatives (based on the Anand pattern, established by Dr Verghese Kurien) have any future? If yes, can this model be replicated in other agri-commodities and services such as finance and health care?

- Aditya Maheshwari, in e-space

Aditya, you have not indicated where you reside, and I have therefore taken the liberty of adding “In e-space”. For a start, that’s the fact of the era of globalisation for sure.

Now, coming to the question of the era of globalisation and the relevance of co-operatives, I do believe the co-operative model is a forever-truth. A forever-truth that will succeed in any time. The reason is simple. Common people like successes that emanate from activities of any kind that involve the support, enthusiasm and energy of the common folk. The co-operative effort, as we have seen in the highly successful Anand Milk Union Ltd (Amul) and indeed the many other activities that surround this highly successful model are as relevant for today as for the many tomorrows to come.

Look at the co-operative model as a people-to-people initiative. In this model, a whole bunch of people who at times have very limited resources pool together to create scale. This scale delivers. The delivery is on the count of pooled efficiency, pooled economy and pooled marketing.

Is this relevant today? It is. There are different models of the co-operative effort. The traditional one is what we see with the milk model used in Gujarat. In many ways even a direct multi-level-marketing system such as the one followed by Amway is a co-operative selling model. Some of the rural marketing models followed by a Project Shakti of Hindustan Unilever or the self-help group models followed by many companies are co-operative models as well.

Whenever a group of people feel the need to create around themselves a model of business that is inclusive and all-involving, the co-operative movement is born. It needs a person of high charisma or a corporate purpose of equal charisma. In the case of Amul, it was a Dr Verghese Kurien and in your and my case, it could as well be a need and want to be inclusive in the purpose of business.

Businesses over the years have become rather exclusive businesses. Never mind the fact that all businesses are run by broad-based shareholders. I do believe the future will pave the way for many more co-operative businesses. Businesses that will be inclusive in the real sense and businesses that will distribute profits to very, very broad-based sets of stakeholders. More broad-based than the current system that operates on dividends distributed to shareholders who play on the market for profits.

These new businesses are relevant to the category of financial products as they are to the segments of health care, beauty, food, beverage and all else.

More Stories on : Brands | Terrorism | Co-operatives | Ask Harish Bijoor

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