The Hindu Business Line : From cooking oil and soap…

A twenty-year-old undergraduate in his senior year at Stanford University wanted to create a great company but had no blueprint of the future in his pocket. He had to return to India, all of a sudden, in 1966, when his father died. “He was to take over the family business, the dreary task of marketing cooking oil and soap to tiny retailers in Gujarat.”

Thus reads the story of Azim Premji in Upendra Kachru’s Extreme Turbulence ( www.harpercollins.co.in). “Wipro was started by Premji’s father in 1945 with the setting up of an oil factory in Amalner, a small town in Maharashtra’s Jalgaon district. The products, Sunflower vanaspati and 787 laundry soap (largely made from a by-product of the vanaspati operations), were sold primarily in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh.

The company was aptly named Western India Vegetable Products Ltd.”

Fast forward to 1974, when the author was working with TELCO (Tata Engineering and Locomotive Co) at Jamshedpur. “Two of my colleagues were Ashok and Hamsa Narasimhan. Both were considered brilliant. They were both graduates from the IIM, Ahmedabad,” recounts Kachru.

“Ashok was a member of the Tata Administrative Service, while Hamsa worked in TELCO’s electronic data processing department. One evening, Hamsa told me that Ashok and she were joining Azim Premji. I asked: ‘Who?’ She replied: ‘You know, his company makes Shikakai soap.’”

Kachru noticed that many other bright MBAs were taking similar decisions. “He (Premji) hired such youngsters and let them run things as they saw fit… Then in 1977, the Janata government asked IBM to close shop in India, thanks to the efforts of the then industry minister, George Fernandes. This move created an opening for Indian companies to get into computer hardware. Premji leapt at the opportunity.”

Two years later, Wipro set up an R&D lab and produced ‘a passable knock-off of Digital Equipment’s PDP11 minicomputer,’ continues the tale.

“In 1981, he started selling the finished machine – the first in a string of products that would make Wipro India’s top-selling computer maker for two decades. Wipro soon became known on India’s engineering campuses as a company that did original research and was able to attract the best brains…”

Just one of the many stories that Kachru includes in his eminently readable book.

Meaning is critical to performance

An entry in www.linkedin.com reads ‘Simon Fell, Director of Technology ITV Consumer, London, UK’. Talking to BBC News last year, he said that the general public is becoming more comfortable with accessing content online.

“We are constantly evaluating new ways to deliver ITV’s well-known and compelling programming to our viewers, to maximise our revenues as a commercial broadcaster,” informs a snatch of Simon’s quote from www.dtg.org.uk.

“This unique opportunity to trial multicast technology with Internet service providers and users will give us valuable insight into usage patterns and help to test this innovative and scalable solution to broadcasting over the Internet.”

It was not the glamour and magic of television that attracted Simon to broadcasting, the magic of technology did, writes Emmanuel Gobillot in The Connected Leader ( www.vivagroupindia.com). “He helped establish digital terrestrial and digital satellite television. In a world where, as he says, ‘every viewer wants to pause everything,’ being able to capitalise on emerging and fast-changing technologies is critical to a network’s survival.”

In Simon’s world, meaning is critical to performance, the author finds. It is such an environment of flux where “you have no idea what you are going to require from others. All you know is that you want engaged employees who are going to work across the boundaries of the organisation in order to respond to demanding customers’ emerging needs.”

How does Simon go about his job? He creates a sense of shared meaning to engage the parts his positional power cannot reach. Co-creating thus is the only way fully to engage ‘real’ human performance in a sustainable way, declares the author. “Co-creating meaning ensures that a connected leader has an impact that will make people feel valued and involved. Meaning ensures that relationships have utility and reciprocity.” Gobillot explains how, in a formal organisation — which operates in the warp-speed world of technology, media and telecommunications — you can rev up things by using meaning ‘to pit formal incentives against real obligations’.

There is a problem, though, with technology, which most businesses face. Early adopters or professionals who think about technology envision the future, and are “quick to paint pictures that describe a world so removed from our everyday lives that it always sounds like a dream.” But bringing the dream to reality requires diligent work through a project plan, reminds the author.

Simon, for instance, would not evangelise or share his vision with ‘viewers or potential users as well as colleagues whom he needs on board.’ Rather, he tries to move to a middle point where he makes technology accessible to their concerns, writes Gobillot.

“To the internal news team, for example, Simon did not pitch a 24/7 mobile news feed (that would be something only technology insomniacs would benefit from) nor did he try to give them a detailed project plan to bring news on mobile phones. What he did was simply to explain how his team’s technology could contribute to the timely and accessible dispatch of news to a localised audience.”

Go connect!

IT in the islands

Telecommunications is relevant in all places, more so in Lakshadweep, in view of the remoteness of the islands, states the Planning Commission in Lakshadweep Development Report ( www.academicfoundation.com). However, telecom penetration, assessed in terms of teledensity (the number of telephones per 100 population), is just around 15 for all the 10 islands together, the report mentions.

“Six islands, viz. Kavaratii, Minicoy, Kalpeni, Andrott, Agatti and Kiltan, are linked by satellite channels to the national network via digital connectivity. Other islands are up-linked through UHF (ultra high frequency) systems via Kiltan. It is proposed to establish digital satellite connectivity with all islands by installing satellite terminals in the remaining four islands.” (Considering that the data in the report is about five years old, it should be useful to look for current information. A pdf in http://lakshadweep.nic.in is on communication, but it doesn’t seem to have the updated numbers.)

“In Lakshadweep, owing to the satellite connectivity, it has not been technically feasible so far to replace the multiple access rural radio (MARR) system by wireless in local loop (WLL) system,” informs the report.

“Efforts are being made to bring in upgraded WLL system to make it functional on satellite media so as to improve the speed and efficiency of connectivity.”

A chapter titled ‘governance issues’ in the report speaks of ‘dissemination of disaster warning’. The Area Cyclone Warning Centres in Chennai and Thiruvananthapuram provide cyclone warning to Lakshadweep; and a monitoring cell, located at the Kavaratti Collectorate, immediately transmits such messages to all islands.

“The TV network also plays a vital role. The communication network of BSNL, Naval detachment, Interstate Police Wireless, Lakshadweep Police Wireless, India Reserve Battalion Wireless, NIC, etc, can be fully utilised for warning and communication. Provision of mobile communication sets to panchayats for use by fishermen can help in rescue and warning efforts.”

Lakshadweep is a Union Territory having a population of about 60,000, the lowest tally in the country. “With the development in IT (information technology) it is now possible to virtually connect the islands,” the report aspires. “A proposal for a state wide area network (SWAN) for Lakshadweep islands is already submitted and this envisages Internet connectivity to each and every office and cyber-café/CIC in the islands.”

SWAN implementation status ‘as on November 20, 2007’ posted on www.mit.gov.in shows the ‘expected timeline’ for Lakshadweep to be September 2008.

The ‘Development Report’ foresees the establishment of ‘high-tech video conferencing studios’ in all the islands ‘for face-to-face communications’. This facility is already available in Kavaratti, Minicoy and Chetlat islands, it informs. “To maintain the quality of the conference, an exclusive network with multi conferencing unit (MCU) may be established.”

For the development-conscious.

Tailpiece

“Our cost advisor has suggested that we can cut our air-conditioning expenses by…”

“Adjusting the setting of desired temperature?”

“No, by removing the firewall!”

dmurali@thehindu.co.in