Saurabh Garg on The New New Thing

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India has finally launched Chandrayaan amidst a lot of fan fare. Its India’s first mission to moon - though unmanned, it still is a giant leap for India. We can now boast of indigenous technology at par with at least some of the other developed nations. Thank you team at ISRO. You have made all of us proud.

Business

• Rupee hit 50 to a dollar for the first time ever. ET reports. Implications are going to be huge for Indian companies. Only advantage that we brought to the table was cost (I refuse to believe that we bring intellectual capital to the table - especially in IT and ITES space). With dwindling economies in Europe and US and falling rupee, I am not sure how will we sustain businesses in India.
• Sensex dipped below 9000 after a long long time. Everyone is scared and its an awesome feeling to be amongst all this.  Lots of lessons to be taken back home. Probably will write another blog post on this.

Advertising

• Recession hits advertising business. There have been unconfirmed news that major advertising networks have frozen recruitments. Campaign India published this story and made it official. Bad news for all the aspiring advertising rockstars. I guess the really good ones are left with a couple of options only. Either start on your own (remember David Ogilvy started one when he dint have an option?) or help us make our clients and their brands famous. Creativeland is still hiring. Do let us know if you think you can lend a hand.
• Sony Bravia: After Balls, Bunnies and Colors, Bravia is back with Domino City. Not as good as balls or bunnies, it still is a much watch. A question (and a tough one at that)… do these ads make you want to own a Bravia?
• Mac vs PC: Unlike most of the people on Internet, I liked the Microsoft ads. And yes, I respect both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Apple came up with this spot to take on the $300 mn ad-spend that Microsoft is embarking upon.

Other things

• Bill Gates and his new company. TechFlash says that Bill Gates has created a new company called bgC3 and is most likely to be a think-tank and would try to coordinate Bill Gates’ personal, philanthrpic and professional efforts.
• Jeff Bezos at TED. In 2003, Jeff spoke at TED about the next web innovation (Thanks Gaurav for the link). In this talk, he draws parallels between the Gold Rush and Internet and then Electricity Industry and Internet and concludes that we have just invented electricity and applicances are yet to made. In simpler language, we have just laid the framework and created environment for innovation. Transformational uses of the same are yet to be seen. For the record, I admire Jeff Bezos and hope to pick his brains some day. This is an old post where Jeff is talking about future of publishing business.

Interesting tidbits

• GrassRoutes.in. Simply put, you travel to the grassroots, see the problem for yourself and be the change. Please visit the website and participate. Honestly, nothing is better than travel and getting to know things first hand. Grassroutes is an YOFA initiative and the honestly I am humbled by the kind of ideas and more importantly execution of the ideas.
• Over a last few days, for n00b.in, I have been checking design stores that cater to Indian customers. Some brilliant stores that I have found are People Tree, playclan, play-asia, thinkgeek. And yes, n00b.in would actually have a store.
• I am on tumblr. A very very good service for sharing things. Its like Blogs > Twitter > Tumblr. Easy, fast, interesting, fun. Am loving it. Please follow me here.

Overall a very very interesting and exciting week. Oh yea, I am in Delhi. If anyone wants to meet, please drop a line.

2nd October came and went. It was Mahatma Gandhi’s Birth Anniversary. I have read a lot about Mahatma Gandhi and with my limited comprehension, I can say that Gandhi is one of those few people who had real powers. Powers to communicate, connect with the masses, use un-conventional thinking to get more ideas, lead by example, so on and so forth. If I can develop about one-tenth of his people skills, I can bring about a larger revolution that he got. Anyways, getting back to interesting developments over the past week,

Business

• Jagdish Khattar (the man who ran Maruti for about 15 years and recently retired as Managing Director) is back and has launched his new venture. Carnation Auto India will be a chain of multi-brand automobile sales and service outlets. (link to news release). Awesome idea. This is a one of those industries where the unorganized sector rules the roost and as we have seen in the past, anyone who can “organize” or “brandize” even a small share of market, stands to gain a lot (Organized Retail, Jumbo King Vada Pavs etc.). In terms of competition, the ones I can think of off the hand are Mahindra’s First Choice and another one by Shah and Sanghi Motors. Need to read more about this. And probably write more on this brandizing unorganized sectors. Truly a new new thing that I will look forward to.
• Warren Buffet invests $3bn in GE. This is second investment in a week. Last week he put money behind Morgan Stanley Goldman Sachs (EDIT: I have no clue how I could have got this wrong. Thanks Shefaly.) However this time I disagree with him. I have worked with GE and my limited experience, I can say for sure that the management is over-hyped and is not up to the mark. They simply dont know how to allow employees to take risks. And the mangers have no clue how to run the show.

Interesting Tidbits

• On their 10th anniversary, Google created this page where you can search the index of Google as it was in 2001. Google Search in 2001. The world has changed like anything in last 7 years. Google for things as simple as India to as complex queries as “prime minister of India” and you will be surprised.
• Discovered Jose Gonzalez. His Heartbeat was used by Sony for their Bravia (Balls) commercial. Love the way he strums his guitar. He makes me want to learn playing guitar all over again. May be I will pick it up soon.

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• Finally wrote the Credits page for this blog. It was long overdue. Please check it out.
• Have started using visual thinking and visualizations in my blog post. Although it is more time consuming for me to actually create these visualizations (given my limited skills on an image editor) but I think the image gets the message across faster and better. Thanks to David Armano for inspiration.
• The govt. of India has finally banned public smoking. This I think is a welcome move. I dont know if smoking is any good/bad, it certainly irritates me and I would rather live in a smoke-free India. ITC can crib as much as it can but the move definitely is a positive one.

Even though this has been a short week but so many interesting things have happened. The world moves ahead. One baby step at a time. P.S.: This post is being published on Saturday. I was traveling on Friday.