Just two years after he stepped down from a leadership role at Infosys Ltd, a company he co-founded with six others, one of Indian IT’s tech titans N R Narayana Murthy is returning as the executive Chairman of the company. K V Kamath who was the chairman of Infosys has stepped down and is set to become an independent director on the board. Interestingly, Murthy’s son Rohan will be his executive assistant. In the past, Infosys founders had deliberately chosen not to involve their children in company affairs.Infosys once seen as the trend setter for the Indian IT services industry has been struggling to grow in the last few years even as its peers like Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, Cognizant and HCL Technologies have grown at a faster pace. Murthy’s return to an executive role in the company is likely to help lift staff morale and also give a boost to the company’s stock price on Monday when the bourses open.Kris Gopalkrishnan who was the co-Chairman of Infosys has been redesignated as executive Vice-Chairman of the board. Company said S D Shibulal will continue to be the CEO and MD. Sources indicated that Murthy has returned to turn around the fortunes of the company which was floundering. Read Also: Changes In Global Policies, Laws May Impact Revenues: InfosysRead Also: Infosys Slapped With Rs 577-Cr Tax Demand Notice“He enjoyed his time playing with Krishna (his granddaughter) but wanted to ensure that Infosys wasn’t left behind. While this announcement might have come as a surprise to others, he has been closely involved in the business developments of the company over the last couple of months. In a sense his hand has been forced because of the poor performance of the company. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more changes in the near future including revisiting the company’s 3.0 strategy which has not been very successful,” said an senior official of the company who did not want to be quoted as he is not authorised to speak to the media. Murthy has requested for just a token compensation of Rs 1 per year. “This is not about the money but about legacy. He wants Infosys to regain its old lustre,” the official added. Internationally too there have been examples of tech titans coming back from their retirements to rescue the companies they founded. The latest example being Michael Dell who came back from retirement in 2007 and is now looking to take the company private.
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The Fortis Foundation and Being Human-The Salman Khan Foundation have come together to create a heart-warming initiative, The Little Hearts Programme, to provide free treatment to children with congenital heart defects.Launched on May 1, a day after the inauguration of its flagship facility - Fortis Memorial Research Institute, Gurgaon (FMRI) – the joint initiative will leverage Fortis’ network of hospitals across the country including the latest facility.FMRI offers super-specialisation in oncology, trauma and paediatric care with embedded centres of excellence at the hospital in neurosciences, minimal accesssurgery, cardiac sciences and orthopaedics. “Over 50 children have already been treated within six few weeks at the Fortis Hospital in Mulund, Mumbai, and at FMRI” the healthcare group claims. Being Human-The Salman Khan Foundation conducts eye camps to address preventable blindness, partnering with MDRI (Marrow Donors Registry India) to help build a marrow registry in India and now, partnering with Fortis Foundation in the area of paediatric cardiac care.Fortis Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Fortis Healthcare Limited has been involved in a number of social initiatives to support the community by providing health services and subsidised medical care to the socially and economically marginalised sections of the society.
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In September 2011 at the PubNext conference, I heard of a bouquet of books being offered in Tamil at a very reasonable price, but on a data card. This is strategic marketing since this highlights the potential for the phone and tablet market. It also coincides with the growth in 3G or mobile broadband connections in India. Nearly a decade ago, a friend from the phone industry and I experimented with the conversion of a short story into an audio file. We hired a recording studio and voice actors for the dramatisation. After some trial and error we generated a short audio clip, designed to suit the needs of the telephone industry (landline as well as mobile). Listeners could pause the story at any point and resume listening at a later time, an especially convenient feature for women. The business model was good but the experiment was a little before its time. One issue in particular was the general scarcity of good content. Now the time is right. The technology has been available for a while and consumers are able to use these multiple platforms with increased sensitivity and understanding. With the audio publishing industry growing at a fast pace and the equally rapid increase in the mobile phone broadband user base, there is a lot of potential for the dissemination of content via mobile platforms. And here “content” is defined specifically as the transference of text from the printed matter to the digital platform or conversion to audio files. In their recently published book, Cellphone Nation, Robin Jeffrey and Assa Doron discuss at length (albeit anecdotally) the impact mobile telephony has had on India since it was introduced in 1993. The statistics they rattle off about cellular phones are fascinating. In India there are more than 900 million telephone subscribers, of whom 600 million subscriptions are active, implying there is a phone for every two Indians, from infants to the aged. The authors go on to discuss the different aspects of Indian society, across genders and professions that mobile telephony has brought about changes, often for the better. Their insightful analysis of the effect texting has had on the evolution of languages and script is relevant to the publishing industry's concerns with digital formats and the need to increase readership. Their evidence shows that rapidity with which languages and scripts are evolving today is the fastest seen since the Bible was translated. This phenomenon can be linked directly to the ease with which people have adopted text messages as a mode of communication. The adaptation to this medium was faster in those languages that used the Roman script. In order to access other language markets like those in India that operated in different non-Roman scripts, cellphone manufacturers and service providers quickly released the Panini Keypad. It enabled people to download software to write in all languages of India on the phone, fast and easily. According to Shiv Putcha, Principal Analyst, Consumer Services, OVUM Telecom, the number of mobile connections in 2017 is projected to be about 1.35 billion, number of mobile broadband connections to be 351 million and the number of smartphones to be 163 million. These numbers indicate the potential of the technology to get across directly to readers. A small first step has been made in this direction by the announcement made by Harlequin UK in March 2013. They will be using the biNu app on phones (including feature phones) and tablets to deliver 8,700 titles from their stable, especially to the developing markets like Asia, Africa and South America. Tim Cooper, commercial director for Harlequin UK in the publishing industry business magazine, the Bookseller says “We've already established our Mills & Boon imprint in India, but it is our aim to make our content available to women across the world.”biNu is a startup that was launched in early 2012 and is backed by Google chairman Eric Schmidt’s TomorrowVentures. The app’s interface is functional. It is not exciting or sophisticated but the potential to disseminate book-publishing content is easily discernible. According to Mark Shoebridge, VP Marketing, biNU, the app is available in English, Hindi and nearly 40 other languages, and supports over 200 fonts. Currently, news on biNu is available in Bengali, Kannada Malayalam, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu. The app is available through Google Play for Android. It is designed specifically to work on the standard phones (feature phones and low-end Androids) that are used by more than 90 per cent of Indians. This infrastructure is a short step away from making audio books on phones a reality. Jayashree, Co-founder and Director TALK audiobooks says that “audiobooks attract VAT which at 5.5 per cent is not very high. (Books do not attract any tax in India.) If the audiobooks were to be made available for downloads on the phone they will probably attract service tax which is 12.5 per cent. But content on mobile will be the future.”It will probably take a little more time for this particular market segment in publishing to mature but the indications are there it will happen. Some of the hurdles that will need to be addressed will be getting the copyright permission for using the content, accurate reporting of the usage of content (text and audio) by the telephone and internet service providers, plus working out the ideal price points given that books, especially in the Indian languages are very reasonably priced.Jaya Bhattacharji Rose is an international publishing consultant and columnist
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How courageous is it to invest in a new market? At the St Gallen Symposium this year, this question is influencing many debates. Whether it is about recovery of Europe or about transparency in financial markets, these issues are being interpreted for a rebalanced world.Entrepreneurs from Asia are increasingly irritated by terms like emerging markets. These markets should be re-positioned as high growth markets. The world will then be divided between high growth and low growth markets. So countries in Africa, Asia would be "high growth", while those in Europe and other western economies should be "low growth". It appears that business leaders in the west are still coming to terms with this shift. I was bemused to notice that a discussion on investing in "new territories" was rapidly interpreted as investing in developing economies. Business leaders from the west still believe in a uni-directional flow of capital. Even though data suggests that trade and investment between developing economies is growing faster than ever. The smart corporations realise it, but many still don't. An increasing number of corporations from Asia are going global and expanding. They need more courage than existing MNCs.Investing in some EU countries is riskier than investing in some emerging economies. For many companies, moving to developing economies is more a leap of desperation than a leap of courage. A company that expands its business to new markets is not just taking a leap of courage, it is doing so to ensure its survival. The theme at St Gallen this year is rewarding courage. This is a great concept that resonates as much in business as in political leadership. Political leadership, too, has to be courageous in developed economies. As new countries become economically stronger, political and business leadership will have to give them space. Western economies will have to allow as much access and support to companies from Asia and South America as they expect in for their firms in those markets. While political leaders in EU are uniting to revive the region, they must also make it more open. Future growth will be in high growth economies in regions like Asia and Africa. If western companies want to grow in the new regions, they will have to allow eastern companies in their own backyard. True courage will reflect in accepting and embracing the balance in global economic power. (Pranjal Sharma is a senior business writer. He can be contacted at pranjalx@gmail.com)
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Beginning 1 May, 2013, leading television broadcasters across the country have pulled out ads from their networks owing to a billing dispute with ad agencies. According to the broadcasters, ad agencies that did not give them a release order reflecting the net amount of the value of the ads would find their advertisements pulled out of air. As of now, most agencies give broadcasters a release order that has the gross amount of the value of the ad that includes the agency commission. When they pay the broadcasters for the telecast of the ad, then the payment is made after deducting the agency commission.The billing issue apparently was triggered when a leading broadcaster received a notice from tax authorities asking them to deduct tax at source for the commission to ad agencies. Both ad industry body, Advertising Agencies Association of India and the broadcasters federation have been talking over a month to resolve the issue.Ad men were hesitant to go on record. “We don't know why there is so much rush and push on this one. This case from tax authorities is bad in law, because on two previous cases in 1995 and 2012, the demand of the tax authorities have been rejected. There is no need to do a TDS on commissions,” said the chief executive of a large media buying house.The immediate impact on the advertising business could be the media agencies that will see a straight hit to their already low agency commissions. Media buying agencies that operate on a commission basis with clients will be the worst hit. For instance, if an agency gets net operating commission of 2.5 per cent for every ad put out by the client, the shift to a net billing will see a straight erosion in its commission to 2.32 per cent. The ones who will not be impacted as much are agencies that operate on a fixed remuneration structure with their clients rather than operate on a commission percentage per release.Agencies having public sector undertakings as their clients are also going to be among the severely affected, as many PSU clients still continue to stick to the 15 per cent commission structure. The potential loss on revenues to ad agencies could be as much as 17.65 per cent.The problem could get worse if print media companies insist on net billings too. A host of small agencies could bear the brunt of the moving from gross to net billings, says one media expert. “What bothers us is the force and speed of implementation by the broadcasters who seem to have gone unilaterally with this demand,” said another senior ad executive.Industry body Advertising Agencies Association of India is meeting broadcasters later on 2 May evening to break the impasse. Even if ad agencies eventually agree to shift towards a net billing, the implementation is likely to take time as agencies will have to renegotiate the terms of compensation with clients and rework contracts.
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Did you ever imagine that somewhere your customer is realising an experience with your brand? And this realisation will soon turn into an opinion where you will be able to lock in your customer for a few more transactions. Today, we are living in a world where customer choices are increasing by the second and customer loyalty turning into a wish. So does customer experience management (CEM) offer a way out for organisations to remain profitably engaged with customers? Let’s find out.CEM can be defined as managing customer interactions to build brand equity and improve long-term profitability. Businesses are discovering a strong connection between loyalty and customer experience. Today, CEM solutions are a competitive necessity. By reporting actionable intelligence, customer experience programs can optimise an organisation's customer service to give it a more competitive edge and create a more loyal customer base. Traditionally CRM systems have helped firms understand customers. They have also helped unify customer information and offer an overarching view. CRM is mostly about transactions and is operationally focused on profiling the customer and collecting data for cross sell. More often than not, CRM is aligned with the company’s objectives and not necessarily to customer preferences. On the other hand, CEM is all about the customer and by using the right blend of systems, processes and infrastructure, it seeks to improve the customer’s experience with the company as an entity.Ovum research suggests that with an increase in IT spending of 3.4 per cent, CIOs of the $118- billion IT industry are focusing on customer satisfaction and revenue growth. Moreover, a Forrester survey reports that in 2013, online retailers will get back to basics: By focusing on strategies and tactics to improve the customer experience, they will strive to increase loyalty and Web conversion across all devices.In a service driven economy, the importance of customer experience cannot be underestimated. CEM adds a level of emotion to a product or service hitherto absent. In today’s markets, brands that succeed are the ones that draw on positive customer experience. So if you get it right, the rewards include loyalty and evolution of word of mouth brand ambassadors who can do lots of good for your product or service and ultimately improve profitability.Customer experience strategy, design and execution will soon become a company’s core competency as well as a core tenet of every organisation’s culture. The more interactions an organization will have with its customers, the deeper the relationships they’ll create. CEM Roadmap Every customer interaction can lead to an experience. Customers sub consciously or otherwise organize a series of clues into a thought stream that finally feed into a set of impressions. Customer might sense or perceive or feel the absence of certain things and every product or service or the employee or the environment in which the offering is delivered offers vital clues for that are compiled in the mind of the customer and ultimately metamorphoses into an experience. Every interaction carries a clue within itself. ListenTo the voice of the customer on a channel of her choice. Emotions constitute the bulk of any experience and by running proactive customer connect programs, customer perceptions should be collated, measured, analysed and addressed. Embed business analytics tools can help organizations look at transactional behaviour, purchase cycles, scope for reference and service expectations.Create BenchmarksEstablish performance indices to study progress towards CEM. Select key indicators to study the impact that a CEM programme is having on your customers. By implementing a best-practices driven CEM framework and incorporating customer feedback, organizations can establish minimum customer satisfaction levels and work towards raising it at periodic intervals.Target Multiple ChannelsThe more channels you target, the more chances are that you will hear from your customers. Any medium that allows or even incentivizes feedback should be on your radar. Collate Best Practices And KnowledgeTo offer a consistent experience and evolve a decision support framework in the organization. The data collected should be used to measure the impact various decisions are having on customer satisfaction and whether the organization is now in a position to leverage cross sell and up sell opportunities.Actionable InsightsAny changes in customer behaviour, buying preferences or even lack of interaction must be studied and analyded to gain actionable insights that feed into the decision making framework to carry the customer experience forward.Incentivise CEM Among EmployeesConnect employee incentives to customer satisfaction. Employee training programs are an integral part of a CEM initiative. Every employee is a stakeholder when it comes to customer satisfaction and needs to be primed towards understanding customer needs and doing their bit to improve customer satisfaction. Brand managers also need to give realtime feedback to employees on brand health in the market. This will help them understand the significance of their roles in managing customer’s perception of their product and brand. (Raj Mruthyunjayappa is Managing Director, APAC & EMEA, Talisma Corporation)
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Few tents and some temporary structures in the wilderness of a cold desert shouldn’t usually bring two large neighbours to a brink of a diplomatic fracas, but the India-China story is different. So when Chinese soldiers crossed over the actual line of control in northern Ladakh and decided to peg their tents on the Indian side, alarm bells began ringing in New Delhi.There are enough reasons for India to not trust China. History has taught her tough lessons. However, the latest testy border spat needs to be handled with the future in mind, not the past.Indeed, China’s military adventurism should be a cause of concern and should be questioned, not with the usual fear so deeply ingrained in the Indian establishment after the humiliating defeat in the 1962 border war but with a confidence of a rising economic and military power.Fifty years ago, ill-equipped Indian soldiers and a scrappy political leadership saw Chinese troops get a quick upper hand. But 2013 is different. Not only is the Indian military better equipped, it is also better prepared. Also, there are enough nations who would quickly side with India.What is necessary is that short-term gains should not dictate the long-term agenda on both sides. Indian Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid’s visit to Beijing next week should be used to ask Chinese tough questions and find suitable responses.While it is highly unlikely that a full-fledged war will break out — it should not — it is necessary to understand the potential reasons behind China’s aggressive behaviour not only towards India, but also its other Asian neighbours with whom Beijing has scrapped over islands and ocean beds in recent months.One, let us not forget that China’s new leaders, President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang, who have taken over at a time when the country once-booming economy is slowing down, are trying to consolidate their power. Xi is not only the secretary general of the Communist Party, but also chairman of the Central Military Commission. While he tries to find and place his own men in the country’s elaborate political and military system, a show of strength always works well with all stakeholders.Second, the new leaders could be looking at raising nationalistic heat to deflect people’s attention from a sluggish economy. At least two generations of Chinese have only seen high economic growth rates that have fuelled prosperity. Xi has arrived on the scene after a decade of high growth led by his predecessor Hu Jintao, who unfortunately left behind an economy desperately in need to structural reforms and high levels of corruption unheard of in the Chinese system earlier. China’s GDP is expected to grow by 7.5 per cent this year against high double-digit growth for most of the past 30 odd years. Domestic insecurities usually prompt leaders to go beat the war drums, and the military aggression can be a result of shifting sands at home.Third, the incursion could be connected with Li’s forthcoming visit to India later this month. Given the unresolved border dispute, China might be flexing muscle ahead of his visit to ensure that Indians do not raise embarrassing issues during what will be his first official foreign visit since becoming premier. China likes to approach issues from a position of strength, so while Xi has conceded that the border dispute will take time to resolve Li might want to put pressure on India to give up a few miles ahead of his visit. China already has India surrounded, with large political, economic and diplomatic interests in Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Bangladesh.Fourth, there is also a view that China is unhappy about India getting closer to Japan and the United States, which is refocusing on Asia after a decade of involvement in countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan following the 9/11 attacks. Limited aggression against its neighbour could be seen to be a sign of irritation on China’s part and a signal that there is only that much leeway India can have if it wants to have friendly relations with Beijing.Whatever be the reason, better sense needs to prevail on both sides as a war will do no good to either. There is obviously a huge economic cost involved if relations worsen. It happened with Japan – Beijing’s biggest trading partner -- last year when a dispute over uninhabited islands in the East China Sea prompted Chinese people to start attacking Japanese factories and products. The business loss was immense.India and China are aiming to raise their bilateral trade to $100 billion soon. If they want to take their relationship forward, they need to bury the ghosts of Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai – the Chinese leaders who launched the war on India -- and look to the future. There is enough room in the world for both India and China to play without coming into each other’s way. But before that they definitely need to get out of each other’s way in Ladakh.(The columnist, a former newspaper editor, is President, Public Affairs, Genesis Burson-Marsteller and co-founder of Public Affairs Forum of India. He has a keen interest in China and Southeast Asia. Views are personal)
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The Internet has changed the way we communicate and socialise, especially with the increased popularity of social networks. As social networks gain more presence in the digital world, a growing threat to online users is that cybercriminals will take advantage of these trusted environments to launch their malicious attacks. The Growing Popularity Of Social NetworksSocial networks provide infinite opportunities to stay connected with friends and family, and to be informed of the latest news and trends. In a country where 65 per cent of the population and 75 per cent of netizens are below the age of 35 years (Census and IMAI), social media is enabling unprecedented connectivity. Social networks have become such an integral part of our online lives with over 76.1 million social networking users in India, according to eMarketer.With the pervasiveness of social networks in our online world, it’s more important than ever to take steps against being the next victim of cybercrime. In India,the Norton Cybercrime Report 2012 found that 80 online adults fall prey to cybercrime every minute and that more than half of online users have fallen victim to cybercrime on social networks. Coupled with the fact that more than half the population (56 per cent) does not understand the risk of cybercrime or how to protect themselves online, Indians are running the risk of being a key targetof cybercriminals. The New Playground For CybercriminalsIdentity theft is akey threat to many social networkusers, as millions of online users use their personal information to register with social networks. The availability of such large amounts ofpersonal data coupled with the trust that people place in their social networksmakes it a rich playground for cybercriminals. \While there is greater awareness around threats like spam and phishing, cybercriminals are using more sophisticated forms of malware to steal identities and information from individuals. Ranging from “likejacking” to shortened URLs being used to mask the malicious destinations of links that claimed to take users to legitimate videos/websites, cybercriminals are getting smarter about leveraging the huge user base and trusted environments of social networks. Not only this, cybercriminals can ‘hijack’ an online account in a number of ways to view and steal private information, using a number of methods to exploit social networking users. The following are most common:Phishing attacks: Cybercriminals can trick users into giving away their login credentials through fake pages that resemble the login pages of popular webmail or social networking sites.Scammers: Cybercriminals can use compromised or “hacked” accounts to lure other users into believing that they are receiving messages from a friend, when in fact, they’re trying to get money or other information.Exploiting User Information: When users give away their location online with status updates and location-based services, cybercriminals can use this information to target victims offline in “the real world.”Malicious Links: Cybercriminals plant links that give them access to users’ web sessions by compromising “cookies,” or information that is stored after login to validate users’ credentials.Here’s one example of how cybercriminals leveraged Twitter to launch their attacks. Ahead of the iPad 3 launch, some Twitter users who tweeted about the new tablet received targeted replies from scammers offering the new device for free.Links were masked behind URL shortening services and led to affiliate pages asking for personal information, such as email address and shipping information.Future Trends: The Monetisation Of Social Networks Introduces New DangersAs consumers, we place a high level of trust in social media—from the sharing of personal details, to spending money on game credits, to gifting items to friends. As these networks start to find new ways to monetise their platforms by allowing members to buy and send real gifts, the growing social spending trend also provides cybercriminals with new ways to lay the groundwork for attack. Norton anticipates an increase in malware attacks that steal payment credentials in social networks and trick users into providing payment details, and other personal and potentially valuable information, to fake social networks. This may include fake gift notifications and email messages requesting home addresses and other personal information. While providing non-financial information might seem innocuous, cybercriminals sell and trade this information with one another to combine with information they already have about you, helping them create a profile of you they can use to gain access to your other accounts.Here are some recommended tips for users to stay safe online:Don't talk to, or accept friend invitations from unknown senders on social networks, IM, online forums or virtual worlds.Don't post your home address, phone number, pictures or other personal details about yourself on public sites – the information you post will live on these sites forever and can also make you an easier target for creeps and bad guys.Do make sure you have a strong password (not your pet’s name, birthday or address) and don’t share it with anyone – not even your best friends, and not even “just once”. Select a password that cannot be easily guessed. Strong passwords have eight characters or more and use a combination of letters, numbers and symbols (e.g., # $ % ! ?). Try not to use the same password for every service you use online, and change passwords on a regular basis, at least every 90 daysDo create groups of friends, relatives or other special sub-groups of friends on these social networking platforms and share photos, video and comments to the restricted group.Do limit the access to your profile from search options and make sure you remove unwanted applications or limit their access to your informationDo make sure you select the most secure (i.e. https) settings whenever they are offered, and notifications of account access from new devicesDo maintain an up-to-date browser and operating system. Browsers and operating systems usually improve their security settings and you can benefit from it by updating to the latest ones. Not updating can leave you vulnerable to attacks and could lead to private information being lost or stolen.Do use free online tools such as Norton Safe Web Lite which provides a safer search experience by warning you of dangerous Web sites right in your search results, so you can search, browse, and shop online without worry.(The author is Internet Safety Advocate & Director, Norton by Symantec, Asia)
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