Inside the mind and heart of Venkatesh Sridhar

It has been so long since I have blogged, was busy gearing up for my first real job with HCL Technologies Ltd.,as a Senior Management Trainee. It is an unique program which consists of those who went to the Tier 1 B Schools in India. We are a special cadre of Management Trainee’s being groomed to go on to head the various functions in HCL and its affiliates.

One amazing thing I have learnt about this company is its unique culture and the way that this company has been making history in the world arena and not just the domestic arena. HCL built a PC model around the same time Apple gave birth to the PC industry and a good 3 years before IBM came out with its PC. We have been an engineering company and we are doing some of the cutting edge technological work which other Indian companies are not doing especially the service oriented companies like Infy and TCS. The only company we can compare to is Wipro as they also have a hardware business, dont know much about their business anyways. And we have pioneered a lot of firsts in India. Another wonderful thing in this company is this wonderful entrepreneurial culture that we have managed to create and sustain and over 100 CEOs have emerged from our organization.

During the induction program, we were told about the various Lines of Business (LOB), Verticals and Horizontals. I would be the first one to admit that there was a massive influx of knowledge into us and then we were given a case study in which we had to prepare a pitch and sell it to the jury. Me and my group made some elimentary mistakes and it cost us. I will be going to HCL Comnet, which is their infrastructure business in the area of Project Management or Delivery as is the term used within HCL.

I am looking to forward to start working soon.

Aamir Khan’s latest movie - Fanaa has been banned in Gujarat due to the fact that he was against the increase in the height of the dam before displacing those who are affected by the Narmoda Sarovar Project. This is clearly an infringement on the part of the Gujarat Govt. on the individual fundamental right of Aamir Khan. This clearly shows that the Gujarat Govt. is playing the game of vendetta politics.

How can a Govt. decide to ban an individual’s film on the basis that he had said something against the Govt.? This reminds me of the Emergency era, an era which incidentally gave birth to the current version of the BJP. It amazes me that the Central Govt. kept quiet and so did the Gujarat Congress as it would have been political suicide if they had gone for it.

I am getting more and more worried about the carelessly and so effortlessly and ruthlessly the Govt. is abusing its powers to espouse its views. In a democratic nation they should have been ready for a debate which they were not and decided to twist the arms of the poor Gujarat film distributors and cinema owners and thus was able to ensure that no distributor picked up the copy of the same.

But, one thing this has exponentially increased the media coverage for Fanaa and Aamir Khan and in the showbiz anything and everything that comes for free is welcome and so is the free publicity being generated for Fanaa. If only the Gujarat Govt. could market itself so effectively in terms of tourism, etc.

Hi guys,
I hope you did go through my report on the Broadband industry in India. I had suggested that broadband companies in India introduce unlimited plans and voila BSNL seems to pay have paid heed to my advice and have now offered an unlimited connection at 256 kbps for Rs. 900 per month or Rs. 9000 p.a. You can read more about the new plan here.

I think MTNL will follow BSNL’s footsteps and will introduce an unlimited plan of its own too. This is great news for all broadband users in India. Only thing being that the costs should be further brought down which I believe will as soon as competition wakes up and realised that these two incumbent telecom operators will run away with the entire broadband market if they do not change their offerings and the quality of their offerings.

The broadband sector is getting hotter and I hope that we as consumers of broadband enjoy a better, faster and affordable to us. Let us see what happens and I am sure that the other operators are going to do the same as broadband is the axis around which the Triple Play strategy will work.

So, here is wishing that many of us get great offers as customers in broadband.

Venky

Hi all,
I recently compiled a report as part of my course at S P Jain and I decided to upload it here for all of you to see. Please do go through it and post your comments here…

My project has been uploaded here Edit: I have lost the report both online and offline hence the link is dead. Sorry.

The project was initially in the .doc format and I converted it using PdfOnline.com

Venky