Its been a metamorphosis last couple of weeks. The reason has been the arrival of our bundle of joy – Arjun.

As a bachelor, and later and married person without kids, it was always a question mark… how would it feel to be a father. How do people take decisions like having a kid. How does one move to the next level in responsibility seemlessly.

Also, honestly speaking, as a person without children, one always gets bored when others start talking about thier kids. I had decided that I will never talk about my children and bore others (who while are smiling on the face, cannot empathise or understand you words).

However, post Arjun, talking about him helps me keep him close to me. It gives me the comfort, and somewhere i think if he also would be feeling good as someone is remembering him.

Today was a special day. I reached my in-laws place quite late. I had dinner and wanted to spend some time with Arjun. For some reason he was not happy today. He cried couple of times… and believe me its very difficult to hear him cry. It is just miraculous that someone crying can make parents wriggle in pain and want to do whatever they can to salvage the situation.

He was hungry, and Dhanu dutifully fed him. I took him in my arms. I sing some random songs now a days, and I assume he likes them. The fact is he does, as he smiles. Today, even though he was not too well, he started smiling everytime i sang a song. It was such an incredible feeling…someone responding to you so much at the age of 18 days.

I could not stop my eyes from getting wet as this was probably the first time I really felt that there is someone who is going to be playing with me, asking me questions, laughing at my jokes and sometimes bugging me for no reason. Its just like adding another friend in the company to do things you always wanted to do.

Now i have company to watch cricket matches, funny videos, Tom and jerry, marathi movies etc… just waiting for it now.

Today was a memorable day, one of the most imp of days of my life, my wifes life. Today is when our first baby, Arjun was born. It has been a patient and impatient wait to see the glimpse of the Gods beautiful creation. Its like a fairly tale come true in so many ways…

9 months back, when i first came to know that I was going to be a father, honesty, I did break some sweat. But I blamed it on the hot climate  :). The news took some time to sink, and to know that things have to change and improve for us to get a new life in this world.

Dhanashree, my wife, is an extremly patient, calm and collected person. While i was still struggling to pathom the situation, she exactly knew what she wanted. Its amazing that the nesting skills are so clear to the female of any species. We decided to improve our house, by have most suitable furniture designed as per our needs. There are no sharp edges, beds are huge to make sure a baby can sleep with us on it, the kitchen is well appointed with the most space saving stuff.

Just as we set our foot on this journey towards parenthood, things started going really bad in the industry. Worldwide turmoil, the layoffs in our companies and the changes in job profiles for both me and Dhanashree. Dhanu put up a brave face in adversity and took on herself to find a more satisfying job, where she would enjoy her work, there by making sure that the baby gets the best from his mother. We juggled with our time, worked hard, mostly unknowingly towards one single goal…. provide the best environment to the baby inside.

Dhanu got a good job, thanks to her hardwork even during the delicate initial few months. She was upfront about her pregnancy with the new company, but they were considerate enough to offer her with a decent hike anyway. But this new job meant that she had to travel longer. But having seen so many ups and downs by now, we knew how to face such situations and find a way out of it. We decided to let the car be with Dhanu throughout the day, with a driver to take her around. This worked quite well, as she could now focus more on her work. I fondly remember the days when i would stuff the car with a lot of food, which she would gobble down when caught in traffic jams.

Weekends were fun, with feeling the baby moves and thinking about what we would do when we become parents. We spent a lot of time looking for the name. But its really amazing that so many times, you finally pick what you liked at first sight itself. So while Arjun was an instant hit with both of us, we kept looking for a name which we like more… and there was none

Throughout the journey, Dhanu felt the pain, the anxiety, but never did she make it look obvious. Hat-off to you my love… !!!

All the memories of the hardwork, a lot more of my wifes than mine, went past my mind today. It had been a 9 month wait, and it was soon going to be all worth it.

We admitted Dhanu in the hospital yesterday, hoping against hope for a normal delivery. Reports increasingly supported a ceasorean delivery, and finally we decided to go ahead with it today morning.

The day was cloudy and dark, like most Mumbai Rain days. I had stepped out for some work, and when i was back, i found people already running around looking for me… and bang came the good news… “Mulaga zhala” (Marathi for “its a boy”). It was magical really to hear those words.

My mother came rushing wishing me … it took a few seconds for me to collect myself… it was one of the best moments of my life.

The we waited impatiently for the baby to come out. The baby came after a few minutes, and I was the first one to hold him. He was beautiful…thanks to the fact that most of his features are taken from him mother. He was already showing all kinds of emotions… mostly of a baby wanting to jump around and people restricting him… he made faces, he smiled, it was just miraculous.

Dhanu was still inside and we waited patiently for her to come. She came, all exhausted and eager to get the baby…

Very first time with mom

I read on the hospital wall… “A child gives birth to a mother” and the meaning just hit me. Dhanashree is now a mother, a sacred responsibility, which God chooses the time and person to give. While I was looking at both my loves, I got the best feeling of my life. It was then the meaning of a famous english phrase that struck me… “A child is the father of a man”…this seemingly meaningless play of words suddenly started to make too much sense !

I got a all from a a very respected business house in the country, for a role in one of thier companies. The urgency in the voice was palpable. Thier understanding of my profile was not something to write home about though. The lack of clarity of the role they were planning to offer was as visible as effect of Taliban in Pakistan. I digged deeper on what exactly was that they were looking at, failing to get a concrete answer. Nevertheless, I was asked to come the very next day to meet a very senior person in the management committee (reporting to group CEO).

The lack of planning was surprising. I landed up for the interview which went on for an hour. I was told multiple times that the role is not defined and I will need to define the role myself. I wonder what they mean when they say that. There has to be some plan, when you are hiring some one at mid management level.

The interview went on well, and I was promised a meeting with other senior people in the organisation. I left the place not sure what exactly I got interviewed for. Anyways, in the evening my wife gave me the spark of speaking to a senior from my insti, who now run a placement consulting firm. And man…what a suggestion that was.

I spoke to him, and the clarity that emerged was eye-opening. I decided to put it up for your benefit.

There are 2 sides to any job…softer and harder. And as you become senior, the relative importance of the softer part has to go on increasing.

So what exactly is it ?
1.       Softer aspects
          a.       Are you comfortable with the people you are speaking with
          b.      Are you comfortable with the company/culture/people in general
          c.       Do the people have clarity on what the job is
          d.      Do the people have clarity on what you are all about
          e.      Why do the people think you fit in
          f.        What is the plan for the business you are getting in to? What are the milestones ?
2.       Harder Aspects
         a.       What is the salary ? how much is the jump ? Is it good enough ?
         b.      What is the position ? Is it better than current position? Will you next promotion here be faster than there? 
         c.       How does career grow there ?
         d.      Who was doing the job before ? If not, why not ?
         e.      Where is he/she ?
         f.        Why is he/she moving ?
         g.       Has he been promoted or moved laterally

I told him I just got a call and I dint know the jd much. he said that’s not a good sign… he said a lot of companies are just testing waters… seeing what kind of candidates come over… also he said calling someone at a days notice happens, but they shud have managed it better…

Also I told him that they said it’s a something new they are starting… he was not very convinced and he said a lot of such openings fizzle out after couple of interviews…

True to what he said, after the urgent interview call, its been 3 days, and I have not heard from them again.

Now here are some tips
1. Be prepared
     - Read all about the things you have written in your resume…all
     - Read about new stuff – esp about coding… you are going to be one
     - Read about concepts, try and make simple applications of what you have learnt
2. Be Honest
     - Dont lie about things you have not done (if there was no coding in your project, explain them why. However, also tell them that you had planned for it)
     - If they ask you a question for which you dnt know the answer, dont lie. Tell them that you dont know. If you lie and its wrong, you are sure to not get the job anyway

3. Have a vision
     - Think about what you want to do in life, why you want to be what you have applied for

4. Be a complete person
     - Many times coding is not the only skill required. Find out skills other than coding you are good at … like say communication skills, hardwork etc. Give them examples when you showed those skills
     - Increase knowledge about current affairs in the industry (top companies, revenue, profit of those companies, etc)
     - Increase awareness about the games you play, the place where you live. Talk about it in the interview.

Hope these tips will help you. Make sure you work very hard. This can make or break your life.

Real Estate: Should I buy Land or should I buy an apartment

Real Estate is one of the most fulfilling asset class. The satisfaction buying a home can give you, nothing else can. Even if you don’t stay in that house, it’s a treasure, a place where you can go relax, a place where you can see other families stay.

But when you are looking at buying an asset, what is that you will look at, an apartment or land.

Well, let me start with a simple microeconomic principle – Supply and demand. The subprime crises in the US has created a huge supply, while expectation of further lowering of prices has kept demand lower. On the other hand, look any economy which is growing at a fierce pace, the prices there sky rocket, just contrary to the earlier case.

Now when most of us are making this decision, especially in India, we most start with the basic confusion – either to buy land or to buy a flat in an apartment. Needless to say, most of us want to have both, at some point of time in our life.

Now, lets go back to the supply-demand logic. It is very important to realize that the supply curve of land is vertical. There is no other piece of land that looks like the piece of land you are looking at. Let me draw an analogy here… “The last supper” drawn by Da Vinci in 1498 is different from “The last supper” drawn by Da Vinci in 1499(had he drawn it again in 1499). Both are unique and have a vertical supply curve. Any increase in demand will cause an exponential increase in price. Land is exactly like that.

A piece of land can be like no other; hence the seller decides the price. You will need to keep this in mind while buying and well as selling. Applying the logic, if you are buying this piece of land from a person who has a lot of such land pieces, you are in for a good deal (for the seller, this is just another plot of land he is selling). While when you sell however, you have to carefully pick the buyer and demand the price you want.

As long as you are not willing to sell, no price can get you to sell.

Lets look at apartments on the other hand. Now its very critical that you chose the location and property which is unique. If its not unique, you will never be able to demand a premium for it.

While I was buying my flat in Mumbai, I studied the real estate market in Mumbai. There are lot of large townships, away from local stations. The facilities are good, the prices same or at a slight premium. But each township has 200+ flats. Also, there is ample of land around, where you can see construction of similar apartments happening. Now look at the supply curve here. Be it rental or outright sell, there would always be supply here, making it difficult for you to get any premium.

Now let’s take a location near the local station. Here there is no land available. This means there can be very little incremental supply in this area. The apartments here are smaller, which implies lower supply within your area/building. Now suddenly, the characteristics of flat in such an area resemble that of land. Needless to say, and small increase in the demand here will lead to steep increase in price.

In summary, would like to just say that when you are taking a long term, high investment decision like property, think about all the above things. If I were you, I would either buy land or buy flat where supply curve is vertical.

Analysing Tamil,Telugu,Mallu and Kannada actresses

Its been roughly 7years for me in the southern part of India. I remember the day when I landed in Bangalore, in year 2000. I have spent enough time analyzing what works or does not work in the southern film industry.

I have spent 3 of the last 7 years in Chennai a lot of it trying to understand what motivates people to watch those over sized women on screen. 

Well there are certain thumb rules I have come up with.

If you are fair, thin, big assets, thin arms, straight hair, 5 ft 4 inch – you don’t even need to audition for a Telugu movie. Just go to sets and start acting. No one will know the difference as most heroines look like that.

You are all the above, but instead of thin, you are plum, you are a sure selection for Kannada movie. Just make sure you bang chest to chest to a dark, villain looking hero.

Now come down further south. To be a good Tamil actress, you need to be slightly darker than kannada actress, with nice plum body. Moreover, you will need to showcase all your curves in the most hideous possible ways. The vulgar pictures will be the main posters for the movie and put up at all the important junctions in the city. However, someone wearing a sleeveless, or backless will be scorned upon and be labeled “Narth Yindian”

To succeed in Mallu movies, you need to be very plum and dark. You should look serious most of the time, like Prakash Karat does. Communism does not allow smiling I guess.

 So here is in short the rule

Creative ways to Layoff

1. Call everyone down for a firedrill and don’t let them go back.

1. Convert all conf rooms as recruitment rooms, and call competitors for hiring. Charge them for every person hired.

1. Take all for an offsite on a one way ticket

1. Sell the office space overnight and leave city

1. Sell the office space and rent back only half the space.

1. Call all employees to a small room, tell them whoever cant make it inside the room will be out of the company.

1. Get everyone is a room and tell them how one needs to be entrepreneurial to succeed. Then ask who all think they have the entrepreneurial spirit, ask all the people who raise their hand to leave and become and entrepreneur. Tell them the company does not trust them.

1. For the remaning people, ask who are not happy with the salary. Now since they saw the others leave for being entrepreneurial, no one will raise the hand. Drop the salary to half and repeat the question. Repeat the exercise till you get enough majority. Then do what you did in the earlier point.

1. Get everyone to attend a course on spirituality, get them to testify that they are not materialistic anymore. Then do any of above activities.

Where are we headed

Now that most of the commentators on Dalal street have been proved wrong, we all stare at the future, thinking where are we headed next.

Some say the pain “may” be over one day, the other day they say there “might” still be some more downside. How can you have a view which is in may and mights. I have been following the stock market for a few years now. The targets for specific stocks are based on pure hunch of the speaker and seem to have no logic what so ever, and that is always followed by “may/might” theory.

Anyways, analyzing the current situation, what the sectors to look at and why. I will mention only about sector I know about or have studied.

1. Banking/Finance: The credit crisis has shown a spectacular uptrend in the last few months. This trend threatens to continue for a few more months as the credit criteria continue to tighten for all lenders. This trend will see a further increase in losses till we reach the peak before starting the downward journey. The credit cycle typically takes 24 months to stabilize, and we can expect things returning to normal only in the last quarter of 2009. Meanwhile, since lending will reduce, there will be lesser and lesser balance sheet by the day; hence one can expect lowering of profits because of runoffs as well. So a double whammy, lower revenues – because of lower new loans and older loans paying off and higher credit losses.

I would suggest staying away from all companies which are too focused on consumer lending.

1. Real Estate: This sector has reached a level of typical saturation, ala FMCG. The prices will not see much growth, unless they are differentiated products – like a “Healthy Living” township or “Build Tomorrows leaders” township. Smaller players will have to go niche, and larger players will have to go volume. If you are invested in a vanilla small player, please exit the counter. The home prices will remain more or less stable in tier 1 cities, may be 5-10% drop in suburbs. Tier 2 and tier 3 cities will crumble up to 20%, esp since the developers here are typically local builders, who can undercut larger players with their cost efficiencies. A branded national player may just end up being a status symbol in these cities. Also, the rentals in tier 2 and tier 3 are very low, taking the regular investment return out of picture for the investor. The speculative demand will die down for lack of growth prospects.
2. Commodities: Like all rallies, commodities rally is about to get over there will be a sharp correction in the prices of lot of commodities, largely because of speculator interest.

IT : Info tech stocks are a risky bet right now. The US slowdown has not yet gone into a full fledged recession yet. My guess is in the next 3 months we will see some bad news in this sector as bigger giants start looking at their spending.

Does Credit Bureau cause higher losses?

Anyways, I hate to be negative, but belonging to the consumer banking industry, I can say that the downside is far from over. The credit crisis has hit India, with the NPA going through the roof. All top Indian and MNC banks are making huge losses.

They say, when you open up the credit bureau for access to information and credit rating the industry normally faces an increase in defaults. Sounds counter-intuitive  doesn’t it.

Credit bureau is supposed to improve the credit scoring, and lets banks take more informed decisions, then why would the losses go up? 

Let me in short first explain how the bureau is used. Well it’s the central repository of loan information which includes how much a customer has borrowed and what is his payment pattern. Banks are free to decide on the basis of that whom they want to give loans. Now if someone has a bad record in the bureau, he does not get the loan, or probably gets a lower loan. This helps the banks in keep the “bad” customers out of their books.

Now if that is the case, why would the losses go up when the bureau system is introduced? Well lets have a look at a lethal mix of introduction of credit bureau and hardened monetary policy and higher interest rate. Add to that, a high inflation and slowing economy, the combination is near fatal for the consumer credit health.

Lets say a customer has loan running from 1 bank, which she is servicing well. Now due to the above mentioned macroeconomic conditions, her business had some issues because of which she could not pay one EMI. Now she is need of more money, and approaches another bank. The idea is to invest and try and get returns to service both loans. Now the Bank no2 refers the bureau and rejects the loan. Getting more money becomes increasingly difficult and it feels like someone has suddenly stop the shower when you where half way through you bath, with the soap itching deep in your eyes.

Consecutively, she falters her existing loans, creating a chicken and egg story. As an insider to this industry, I can see the trend in the default in the last one year, with loss rates almost doubling in consumer lending. This has led to Banks tightening the credit criteria, leading to drying of money supply to consumer, leading to more defaults.

This phenomenon apparently happen whenever a bureau is introduced in any economy. I hope this short term effect is near end now, but cant make myself believe as the numbers are suggesting otherwise.

Applying Game Theory to Splitsvilla on MTV

Some of you may have seen the last episode of Spitsvilla. I normally enjoy seeing Roadies and similar games and try and apply Game Theory there.

The week Anne was brought back. I had predicted that she will be brought back when see was unceremoniously sent back, as I thought the game was not fare to her. She was back and she was told the new rules of the game, that is only one between Varun and Vishal will be winning.

Anne liked Vishal, but she feared getting eliminated by Varun. Here is the tradeoff matrix. Anne assumed Vishal will not dump her at any cost.

Varun

                                                                        Anne   

Anne assumed Vishal is part of her side, and played the game with Varun. She sang a song for him. But have a look at the above payoffs.

Assumption : Anne singing a song for a person – sign of her keeping that person.

a. Anne sings for Vishal, Varun Dumps her – Varun gains

b. Anne Sings for Vishal, Varun keeps her – Varun screwd

c. Anne sings for Varun, Varun dumps her – Varun gains

d. Anne sings for Varun, Varun keeps her – result unknown, Varun may or may not get her.

In anycase, the dumping Anne is the compelling strategy for Varun. By doing this, Anne lost Vishal as well, which I thought was stupid of both Vishal and Anne. As always, the result of this game is a sub-optimal solution.