IS FINNOVATION & BLOCKCHAIN THE NEW DISRUPTION WORLD IS FACING?

Financial Technology innovation or FINNOVATION lies in the center of disruptive changes the world is facing today. The big names in the corporate world, which were earlier ignoring the potential impact cryptocurrencies may have on the existing financial system, have now started pouring in weight and acknowledging the fact that decentralization may be the future, where no single nation or government controls the currency markets. It is getting even more difficult for the Central Banks and governments to accept cryptocurrencies as a medium of trade in lieu of their currently predominant fiat currencies, given the fact that it will reduce their strong hold on the existing centralized domestic financial system. The world is moving towards decentralization, which is not controlled or regulated by a singular regulatory authority but entirely by market demand. Tokenization, though in its infancy stage, is one evolving moment, which can help in moving towards decentralized form of value exchange across industries.  

The pace at which blockchain applications are expanding with every passing day and finding their ways into businesses by promising SMART solutions has also taken everyone with a surprise. It has sparked an interest outside the community of digital currency enthusiasts, considering the huge opportunities it presents.. The technology looks promising as it has lot of potential uses beyond banking through creation of blockchain database and smart contracts that maintains all kinds of records without laborious, paper-heavy processes in secure manner. Blockchain always produces Single Version of Truth that is too difficult to tamper as it is being distributed across the network to all parties. Technology giants such as IBM and Microsoft have also taken strong cognizance of this disruption and are working on smart solutions based on Blockchain technology for their customers across the world. Automation in this space will definitely revolutionize the record-keeping and save precious time for businesses especially in FMCG and manufacturing logistics, where sourcing of material from authenticated source has always been questioned from traceability and auditability point of view. When adopted at scale, the solution truly holds the potential to save billions of dollars in logistics and supply chain industry by developing a symbiotic relation with Internet of Things (IoT).

Bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies are changing the Fintech world in the same manner beyond our imagination as Internet and email changed the way we communicate couple of decades ago. Leaving aside the fear, the discussions have started more seriously amongst the regulators on how to embrace and incorporate this change in their existing systems. With this fast evolving disruptive technology, I can only say with my thoughts that Bitcoin and Ethereum, which lies at the core of these cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology, are here to stay. Finnovation and blockchain will govern the world of future, which has appeal of tech-savvy individuals, a point that is sure to soon work in its favor. 

auf Wiedersehen MDI and Gurgaon !

Unforgettable View of Dining at MDI

Yesterday was the last day for many NMPians like me on this amazingly green campus. Walking down from this heavily guarded and iron gated area alone was not that easy this time. I realized how can one fall in love with every small bit in this campus - be it flowers, lush green playing fields,  long lasting gossips over a cup of coffee at Sharmaji, sleeping in classrooms, late night badminton sessions, informative guest talk sessions and walking across bricked walls discussing potential entrepreneurial opportunities etc. The list goes on and it is difficult to express all in this one blog write up. For the last few days, I have witnessed those 100’s of nostalgic pictures loaded everywhere on facebook, status message changes on WhatsApp and friends hugging together time and again while carrying their luggage and seeing them off. 

I look at the empty corridors and common room where we used to celebrate getting-to know-each-other ice-breakers in the beginning, birthday parties amid music, dancing and cake cutting. Done with my academic courses, projects, exams and pretty much everything expected of me (not to forget about the still pending dissertation !), I walk around reminding myself that it is going to be the last time for many months/years perhaps before I come back for a visit. The lone thoughts of losing pretty much all building permissions, handing over the room keys and other privileges that come with being a student was very weird. I wonder why they need to do that – taking away something that is arguably the most valuable thing during our college days. But at the end, this is what the truth is and each of us has to live with it. 

Meethi Meethi Yaadien

It doesn't end here but the inexpressible feel of interacting with the anxious incoming batch juniors while sharing your experiences in terms of course rigor and learning is unmatched. I will miss those discussions at cafe/ telephone about latent highlights of investing time in this amazing 1-year stint. I always feel amazed that the constitution of the batch which looks so awkward in the beginning (due to huge range and variety in terms of enriching experience) later becomes your strongest learning source.  It reminds me of the cycle which has continued from the past and will continue in future making this program even stronger with every passing year.

Guest Talk Sessions @ MDI by Experts

Though I did not get the time and courage to express my explicit thanks to each one of you, but I cannot run away from the fact that I had the honor of learning something unique from each of my 65 fellow colleagues - their diverse thoughts and experiences. I thank you all and MDI faculty for your kind support extended to me over this period. I may have been involved into arguments with many of you over the past 12 months but that doesn't mean anything personal. All of us will be achieving greater heights in career and personal life in the years to come and let us stay connected whenever we find a chance to meet by taking out some moments from our busy lives. I am sure we will start feeling the voids of missing our colleagues in the days to come.

Good Bye Millennium City

Yet, there is sadness. I have learnt a lot just being on campus at MDI and brushed my shoulders with some great minds. One year there and I have come out a really different person. Though most of us may not realize now but will surely do so in the days ahead. Leaving MDI and of course Gurgaon is something which I may take a while to even describe to myself, a sadness that is intensely personal, one that has little to do with people out there. On balance though, I now know it’s possible to be immensely happy and equally sad at the same time in a way that does not add up to zero. This is that one moment. !!

Abishek Mittal

NMP XXVI - Class of 2014

MDI, Gurgaon

Strategizing Indian firms - The Futuristic MNC's

STRATEGIZING INDIAN FIRMS

With the world getting more and more integrated, with the Indian firms gaining scale and importance at the international level, I strongly wonder whether Indian firms are truly geared up for sustainable challenges that they will be witnessing at this turf. Is operational effectiveness in terms of their strong execution capabilities the only answer or has the time evolved when the indigenous firms have to start thinking towards staying ahead, adapting different difficult-to-replicate capabilities and drawing up a solid strategy for a longer term?

Managing global businesses has been a business challenge for centuries. Despite the recent economic downturn, India is still highly diverse and one of the fastest growing economies in the world. The inherent strength of the country’s economy can be gauged from the fact that indigenous businesses are alive and healthy. Every major family-run business in India, like Mahindra's, Tata's, Birla's, Ambani's, and Ruia's (Essar Group) is in more businesses today than ever before. They have successfully forayed into steel, shipping, oil, real estate, power, telecom, consumer goods, pharmaceuticals, retail - you name it and they are into it. And it is not that they are restricting themselves to within the geographical boundaries. They’re making their mark abroad, too and are aggressively entering into Joint Ventures and Alliances with the foreign counterparts. Wherever they are finding an opportunity, 100 percent acquisition is the route being adopted. For e.g.: Tata bought the troubled Jaguar Land Rover in 2008 and turned it around successfully, Mahindra's bought 70% controlling stake in Korean Ssangyong and have successfully placed themselves on a Global Map.

The growing complexities in business arena is giving the strongest push to young corporates in India to carefully strategize and plan their every business move. The core competencies of the business have to be protected intelligently to fend off fear of getting acquired by your competitors. One bad or delayed move in this dynamic business world can cost your existing successful business dearly and can put the same in jeopardy at worst. A live clear example to this fact is Nokia's delayed response to smartphones (once a world leader in mobile phone handsets got acquired by Microsoft in Sep-2013) and Kodak's delayed response to emerging digital photography (once a worldwide leader in photographic films filed its bankruptcy in Jan-2012). It is imperative that Indian business houses continue to act locally but think globally. 

Undoubtedly, with the Indian economy opening up, foreign companies are evincing greater interest in the India and are trying to make their entry into their own areas of expertise. However, presently the local firms are far better at overcoming issues such as poor logistics network, poor infrastructure, frequently changing regulations etc. than multinationals. This is not because they’ve somehow developed a superior operating model but simply because they’re often still run by their founder members: well-connected industry veterans who are adept at finding practical work-around solutions and still make most important decisions by themselves. In contrast, multinationals lack the local market understanding and personal relationships with government officials and other stakeholders, and are often hindered by their own time-consuming global decision-making processes. One thing which has to be kept in mind is that these one-time fixes pile up to create a hotchpotch of ill-fitting processes and ad-hoc solutions. Without a solid foundation and carefully planned strategy, the companies will soon begin to experience operational problems, such as poor quality, customer defections, low employee morale, and poor  management.

Indian corporates must understand the importance of linking industry to academic institutes. India is proud of its world class institutions like IITs and IIMs. To leverage on the research going on at these institutes, the futuristic Indian MNC's must come forward and start engaging brightest minds at these institutions at a much higher level by exposing them to real time unsolved business problems. This will in turn groom and better prepare the talent coming out of these colleges to be productive when making an entry into industry. To succeed not just in global markets but even at home, these companies must combine their traditional advantages - the vision, risk tolerance, flexibility, and speed needed to capture early-mover gains - with a relentless focus on developing the capabilities required to catch up with world-class competitors elsewhere. The leadership succession has to be well planned so as to avoid getting into the problem of leadership vacuum. In other words, Indian companies must master a new form of strategic and organizational ambidexterity that goes far beyond execution alone.

Abishek Mittal

NMP XXVI - Class of 2014

MDI, Gurgaon

Empowering Nation's Women

My country India still remains a mystery, a country that promises so much yet delivers so little. In the absence of visible leadership recently, the country is plagued with myriad of problems like corruption, policy paralysis etc. Apart from these, another vital issue which is lingering on from quite long but remains on the sidelines is the gender inequality. 

India is although compared with the emerging economies of the world, but the picture is way far from being rosy. There are still many pockets in this country where girl child is not treated at par with the boy child and where we have to consistently promote slogans like "Save the Girl Child", "Equal Rights for the Girl Child" & "Education for the girl child". In-spite of various agreements testifying women's rights, women are still much more likely than men to be poor and illiterate. Every other day, there is news of female foeticide and rapes happening in different regions of this nation. It is shameful that even after 66 years of democratic India and with a Right to Speech, women in this country do not feel safe while going alone on the roads even in the daylight.

Even in business organizations, women are not treated at par with men. There are many instances we come across and ignore in our offices daily, where women have to suffer in their hiring, firing, compensation, promotions, career growth, assignments etc. owing to gender politics. Despite there has been huge emphasis on gender based diversity in recent years, barriers to equality still exists in corporate world. The whole idea and mentality behind it has to change if India wants to grow as a successful nation.  

In the fast evolving era of 21st century, efforts must be laid on integrating and promoting gender equality in organization. Nowadays, there are host of examples of women who have accepted challenging leading roles in organizations and have been quite successful. Women like Chanda Kochhar (CEO & MD, ICICI Bank), Indra Nooyi (CEO, PepsiCo), Shikha Sharma (MD & CEO, Axis Bank), Anita Prasad (General Manager at Microsoft, Treasury Capital Management) etc. have made our nation proud by winning many leadership awards and accolades at the global platform. We must now learn from these past examples and start supporting women in choosing their own career paths. Wherever possible, we have to join hands to uplift women to decision making positions by showering full faith in their abilities and without holding any discriminating views. Women can contribute effectively in nations growth by playing a pivotal role in the development process and by raising productivity levels.

Many social institutions in the world are already fighting for equal women rights. One of the Millennium Development Goals for 2015 laid by United Nation Development Program is "Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women". It is to be fairly understood that that there isn't a magic wand or any formula that exists which will empower nations' women in a fraction of second. The process is gradual and it will take its own sweet time to show results but what is more important at this juncture is that we have to implement pro-women empowerment policies without any delay. The golden key here lies in taking the first step to witness a better future. 

Abishek Mittal

NMP XXVI - Class of 2014

MDI, Gurgaon

What did i learn from Strategy Course?

Strategy was one of the courses I was excited about before joining MBA. I was always amazed and eager to learn the basics behind how firms like Intel try to stay ahead of time, how has technology changed business ecosystem in firms like Yahoo, how are firms thinking of creating shared value and how much is the consumer important in the overall value chain? How do firms strategy vary in highly complex globalized environments? This course was finally able to answer most of these thoughts with conviction.

The key learning out of this course may not have come directly out of books but it was very important to understand the core basics of strategy. The first and foremost take away was that we must build our own perspective and think differently, rather than simply getting carried away with the voice of the system. The whole new concept of dissecting a case to generate viewpoints from diverse people in the batch took discussions to entirely different level. Simply going through the facts/numbers in the case may not be enough to arrive at a solution but interlinking the numbers with the situation and thinking on the background for those numbers is what is actually more important.  

It was indeed very exciting to analyze the business case with the protagonist of case, wherein he presents his viewpoint on how he felt when he took an important decision when he was in a troublesome situation. Timely, there were other key speakers who helped to relate concepts by focusing on live examples. For e.g. Mr. Sanjay Goyal (CEO, Ericsson India) reinforced the differences that lie between operational effectiveness and strategy, Mr. Nagarajan (MD, Mother Dairy) discussed about the importance of customer and supply chain in the business of milk distribution in NCR, Mr. Navi Radjou discussed the fine difference that lies between wisdom and smartness, Mr. Sachin Garg (Founder & CEO, Grapewine Publishing) highlighted the hindrances that comes in the path of a successful entrepreneur and laid the importance of understanding your customer etc. 

Change is one thing which each one of us likes to resist but firms cannot survive if they do not adapt to change. Porter’s Five Forces Model, 4C, McKinsey 7S models talk of ways firms can create a unique differentiating position and fit for their products/services by analyzing their internal and external business environments. Companies focus on strategies to create sustainability for themselves. They target their efforts in creating a fit that would set them apart from their competitors.

Finally, towards the end, all my learning’s throughout the course culminated into building Market Strategy during MarkStrat simulation exercise. This daylong live session gave me hands on experience on the concepts and some specific highlights i captured in this session were:

• Position your product uniquely differentiating from competitors.
• Budgeting and investing in R&D every year is very important to sustain.
• Timely calling off a product and launching a new one are equally important.
• Blind following of competitors move can be detrimental to business.
• Leverage only to the extent you are in a position to pay your debts. 

There were additional insights on LIPS and HIPS category of products and how to align value chain to generate value for your customers. They need to strategize and constantly work on transforming the product from LIP to High Involvement product category. We all live in a cut-throat competitive world, where the mind of corporate is ruled by capitalist ideas. To sustain in this scenario, and to maintain profits, the products or services needs to be constantly updated. Companies need to create differentiation as a perception or create value for the consumer to stay ahead.

Abishek Mittal

NMP XXVI - Class of 2014

MDI, Gurgaon