Imagine a farmer, speeding across his farms in an all-terrain vehicle (ATV) to check on his crops and to take the harvest to the nearest market. Or imagine a two-member police force patrolling across small alleys and gullies in run down and rough neighborhoods or districts of a metropolis. All this can happen over the next four years if Polaris India manages to ink agreements with the various government departments that it is in talks with. But that is not how it started for Polaris Industries. This year, when Polaris India opened their 14th dealership in Bangalore, a 13-year-old son of a rich builder walked in through the doors of the dealership and fell in love with the ATV’s rugged looks. He pestered his dad into buying him an entry-level ATV that cost Rs 4 lakh. While the dealership is set up for retail and institutional sales, the interest in ATVs has caught the attention of the police and armed forces in India. “Our ATVs are being demonstrated to the police and the defence forces in India. They have expressed interest because our vehicles can be custom fitted for a lot of military and civilian applications,” says Pankaj Dubey, MD of Polaris India, the 100 per cent subsidiary of the $3.5-billion Polaris Industries in the USA. In fact, currently Polaris imports all the vehicles from the USA where they are manufactured.Dubey adds that the company has scaled up to 14 dealerships in 18 months and plans to open six more by the end of the year across the country. “Today we have a dealership in most of the states and now we are looking at the North Eastern states,” says Dubey. Polaris India expects that by the end of the decade, 50 per cent of their India business will come from enforcement and defence agencies. Polaris believes that India’s long borders and coastline would require vehicles such as these for patrolling. He also believes the ATVs can play a role in agriculture with light fitted trailers. “These small vehicles can be applied in to carrying loads up to a ton and can be very useful for short hauls in areas where your average truck cannot enter,” says Dubey. He adds that over the next three years, the company would focus on building relationships before bringing in advanced applications on their vehicles. The company has currently created experience centres in 14 cities, where the dealership is situated. It has found entrepreneurs who have keenly invested in one to five acres of land and have created artificial ATV ‘experience’ zones. These experience zones will have the entire range of Polaris ATVs, which can be driven around for an entry fee. These businesses make their money with the number of youth and families that visit the centre to experience off-roading. This works for the local dealers because these experience zones make their service centres busy as there will be a set of vehicles that need to be serviced and allow the retention of trained mechanics. “These experience zones allows us to build new business around a region,” says Rohit Murthy, Managing Partner of AKB Motors, a Polaris dealer in Bangalore. The brand is also planning to have racing events once the vehicle sales reach a certain scale. “But off-roading is a serious sport globally, it is just about gaining interest,” says Rohit Murthy. He says that today the interest would be around what these vehicles are and how good they look.
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With the advent of affordable smart phones and 3G services in India, the accessibility of internet on mobiles has increased multi-fold. The latest BCG report has also projected that the fee-based revenue from mobile commerce could be well over $4.5 billion by 2015 in India. Realising the need of the future, wherein e-commerce could be majorly dominated by m-commerce, ZaakPay has launched its payment gateway compatible with mobile phones that offers an easy user-interface to its consumers to make secure payments while shopping. Upasana Taku, Zaakpay's Founder & CEO speaks with BW Online's Tanuja Chatterjee about Zaakpay and the launch of their mobile payment gateway - mPay. You have earlier worked with similar platforms such as PayPal, MobiKwik. What motivated you to commence with Zaakpay?I have been fiercely passionate about how payments should work for consumers and businesses. I became the director and partner at MobiKwik in February 2010. It was here that I actually realised about the online payment issues faced by web businesses and consumers in India. Therefore I came up with this concept of payment gateway that is being practiced abroad for quite some time now. That is how Zaakpay originated with an aim to solve the payment pain points for eCommerce in India. How does Zaakpay function? Could you also mention the payment strategy involved?The Zaakpay payment gateway for websites i.e. "WebPay" includes everything required to connect your online business to your Internet merchant account. WebPay provides an intelligent and integrated online payment processing solution for empowering organizations to accept credit cards, debit cards and also accept payments through net banking payments. With the help of Zaakpay your business can now reach a wider audience across the country by enabling your e-store to start accepting credit cards and other payments online. Zaakpay's current solution Webpay charges merchants a monthly subscription fee of Rs 500, along with a per-transaction fee of 3 per cent. Our cost to each transaction is amongst the cheapest in the Indian market. We enable merchants to start collecting payments without paying anything upfront. How will you differentiate Zaakpay from other e-commerce payment gateways? With established gateways in the market such as PayU, CC Avenue, how do you think your platform is accepted by audience?At Zaakpay our customers complete an online merchant application (we require no paper work) leading to fast approvals. We have the fastest merchant account approval records of all the payment gateways in India and we get a merchant up and running in 24hrs with payment integration. Specifically for mobile payments, we are the leader of the pack. There is no payment company in India which has created an in-app or mobile-web solution that actually works. We have processed more than 10Cr of mobile payments in last 2 months! What is the security mechanism that you are following?We use checksum based security to perform handshake with merchant website or mobile application. The algorithm used is HMAC SHA-256. Our internal systems are PCI-DSS certified as per VISA/Mastercard guidelines. Since the inception of Zaakpay, how has it flourished in terms of clients and other arenas? Kindly provide numbers and names of your clientsStarting with just five customers, ZaakPay currently has 170 clients, including websites portals like Exotel, Oravel, Oklisten, BpbWeekend, Hitwicket, Onlineteleshop, Almostfree, etc. It clocked a top line turnover of Rs 80 crore between April and Dec 2012, thanks to the funding from Sequoia Capital last year. It has a 12-strong team in Delhi and one person in Bangalore. ZaakPay expects to break even in the next two years and is eyeing a top line revenue of about Rs 200 crore in the next fiscal year. Choosing payment gateways is still a taboo in India. How does that affect your functioning? Also what are the issues you face?Electronic commerce and mobile commerce are emerging areas in India. Whether it is an existing brand venturing into e-commerce or a new upstart, most merchants have little idea on what to look for when choosing a payment gateway. The worst part is that little information is available on the internet and whatever is available is quite confusing. We get all kind of enquiries from merchants and we try our best to answer them, without caring about whether they sign up with Zaakpay eventually or not. RBI has issued that all payments made to Indian business accounts via Paypal should be brought into banks in India. Does the same rule apply to Zaakpay as well? Do you think such guidelines hamper the functioning of foreign players in the Indian market?Any cross-border payments, which is the forte of Paypal, can be used for money laundering which is the key concern for RBI. PayPal is not an Indian company, so far they have been doing only cross-border business in India, which is why RBI has been unable to completely regulate them. When PayPal starts offering domestic payments in India, they would have to create an Indian company and would be completely regulated by RBI to offer payments in India. Zaakpay is an Indian company and follows the RBI's directive for payment intermediaries. What is the revenue model of Zaakpay?The pricing for Zaakpay is lucrative with a free trial that simulates the transaction in a sandbox environment. For startups, there is a one-time account fee of Rs 5,000. Any company with transaction volumes under Rs 5 lakh per month falls under this category and will have to bear a 3 per cent card transaction rate along with an Rs 500 monthly subscription fee. There are other options, 'Business' and 'Enterprise' for higher volumes. Other than webpay, Zaakpay also will also offer mPay, a mobile payment solution. Mpay incorporates two payment solutions for the mobile medium. The first is a mobile web (browser-based) payment solution. It can work on all popular mobile browsers. Second is an In App payment solution, for which user does not need to open a browser. The transaction can happen in the app itself. This solution is available for Android and iPhone apps. The revenue structure of mPpay is percentage per transaction. We charge our customers (mCommerce, digital content, subscription services) a fixed 3-9 per cent of every payment depending on the business category and scale. Kindly tell us something about mPay. What do you think about its acceptance in our Indian market.mPay is Zaakpay's mobile payment processing solution for brands/retailers which enables them to collect payments via the mobile. With Mpay, users can buy easily on the go using their mobile phones. mPay offers two payment solutions for the mobile medium. The first is a mobile web, browser-based payment gateway solution that delivers on websites optimised for mobile devices with which the consumer interacts using the mobile device's Web browser. Customers can browse for products and services and purchase from a retailer in much the same manner as through the retailer's e-commerce web site. The major difference is that the interface is optimized for the resolution and display space available on the mobile device. The second is an In App-based payment solution, which relies on applications that can be downloaded to and run natively on a smart phone - on both Android and iPhones. Customers can browse, select and purchase from a retailer using the app and within the environment created by the app. Since the transaction happens in the app itself, no mobile web browser is opened to complete the payment. In-App payments are zippy fast, user friendly and result in fewer drop-offs. In the Indian market, as of late 2012 mobile internet usage has surpassed desktop internet usage. As a result, eCommerce players in India are making a run for launching their mobile websites and mobile applications in 2013. Top eCommerce players like Flipkart, eBay, Snapdeal, Homeshop18 all have mobile apps and mobile sites however, most accept only CoD (Cash on Delivery) orders on the mobile. 2013 is when we will see a lot of players focus in optimising their mobile applications for user experience and payments. Digital content/gaming players have been using Google wallet and iTunes payment options in their apps however, what they dont realize is that Indian debit cards and Indian netbanking payment options are not accepted by Google wallet. In India, net banking and debit card users comprise 80 per cent of the online buyers since credit card users in India are a minority. Your future plans…We are working towards making mobile commerce a reality in India. More Indians will transact on mobile in the coming years than they do on computers. With the advent of cheap smartphones , especially Android, millions of Indians will have sufficient power in their hands to make payments instantly using data networks. We are creating specific solutions for mobile websites and mobile apps which allow them to collect payments from users in a simple and secure manner.
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Sustainable growth assumes paramount importance in a booming economy like India. To continually achieve this, our banking industry plays an active role through a slew of actions which bears an impact on the economy. However, the banking system has its own set of problems which needs attention. These mainly include managing risk effectively, fraud detection and prevention, maintaining customer relationships etc. All these burgeoning issues can be handled in a streamlined and process-oriented way through the use of Data Analytics.Data Analytics (DA) enables organisations with large customer bases to manage and automate large volumes of day-to-day decisions. DA plays a very important role in ensuring that organisations achieve their growth objectives while better managing the risk and reward of their commercial decisions. According to a NASSCOM report, the Indian data analytics market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 25 per cent to become a $1 billion industry by 2020. Though data is available in abundance, the Indian BFSI sector is yet to utilise this data effectively to make significant inferences and draw valuable conclusions that will increase the efficacy of operations. To bridge this gap between information and the effective use of it, modern DA solutions bring with them the knack to determine what would be the decision to make for both banks and customers. Thus, the use of DA is increasingly becoming a necessity as it effectively filters through huge databases. It provides software and analytical tools that help organisations detect and prevent fraud, and help authenticate new customer services. To put it simply, it helps banks and financial institutions take better, more profitable decisions about their most important asset (customers) throughout their credit lifecycle. Enumerated herewith is a brief on the stages of the customer lifecycle and the usage of data analytics in each of them. Customer Targeting: DA can be used to understand consumer behavior, for segmentation and to develop the right offer for the right customer. It also helps in determining the right channel to reach out to the customer.Customer Acquisition: Within this, there are multiple opportunities for banks to benefit from data and analytics in order to acquire potentially profitable customers at lower cost and risk. For e.g. a bank can conduct a fraud check by using data from internal sources; from other banks; from credit bureaus and from third party data sources to ascertain the identity of the applicant. Once the applicant's identity is ascertained, banks can do a credit check with a credit bureau; undertake analytics and develop an application score to predict the payment behavior of the applicant. This can also be used to offer differential pricing for different sets of customers. In addition to understanding the propensity to pay, data and analytics can also be used for understanding the affordability status of the applicant in terms of ability to pay.Customer Management: The golden rule for most banks is to nurture customer relationships. This can only be done through tracking the customer's requirements, propensity to pay and ability to pay. During this phase, the banks also get an opportunity to maximise customer value through cross selling and up selling products. Banks can also use data and analytics to ensure responsible lending. While credit bureau data can play a crucial loan in customer management practices, DA help banks and NBFCs undertake effective risk management measures and provide better customer service.Collections: Banks can use data and analytics to reduce delinquency, manage cost of collections, manage attrition and reduce wasted time. It is all about knowing the right value of the customers to understand which customers are worth retaining for the future. Credit bureau data can be effectively used for better delinquency management. All said and done, it is understood that information too has a time-value. The earlier a piece of information reaches a decision-maker; the higher relevance it holds. DA solutions drastically help in cutting down the time it takes for actionable information to reach decision-makers, thereby improving the value of information and providing a decisive edge over competition. It enables continuous monitoring of the health of the business. Especially in banking, this capability is critical, since there is a need to continuously monitor critical measures such as asset quality and risk exposure of banks.The author is Head - Decision Analytics at Experian Services India
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The post-digital era, like the post-industrial era, is the “new normal” for business and a new basis for competition, says Tech Trends 2013’ report from Deloitte. And in this era, convergence and controlled collision of five forces — analytics, mobile, social, cloud, and cyber — all newly emerged, evolving and techno-centric, are must for businesses. And what's more, business is enabling social engineering by setting up platforms that can relieve rather than serve traditional organisational constraints such as deep hierarchies, command-and-control cultures, physical proximity and resource concentration.As technology-centric forces drive business innovation, CIOs will emerge as catalysts in the post digital world across the executive suite, helping others understand the boundaries of the possible, forcing others to think beyond existing solutions and processes and for realising transformation. While some have predicted the slow demise of the CIO with IT managed as a distributed function across the business, Deloitte predicts the opposite. CIOs will likely not only become omnipresent on executive committees, but also become consigliore to CEOs.There has likely never been more potential for the CIO to shape business performance and competitive stance. IT departments that aren’t seen as reliable, efficient, and effective will likely be relegated to utility status. The CIO can lead the move to tomorrow, reshaping business as usual, and driving innovation. When CIOs catalyse the convergence of the postdigital forces, they can change the conversation from systems to capabilities and from technical issues to business impact. Plan big, start small, fail fast, scale appropriately.“It is an opportunity for IT to deliver extraordinary value via modest investments on top of a strong legacy technology footprint. IT can deliver engagement and empowerment to business customers, both innovating and industrialising”, says Mark White, Principal and Chief Technology Officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP and co-author of the report.The Deloitte 2013 report shares ten trends grouped into two categories. Disruptors are opportunities that can create sustainable positive disruption in IT capabilities, business operations, and sometimes even business models. Enablers are technologies in which many CIOs have already invested time and effort, but which warrant another look because of new developments or opportunities. Enablers may be more evolutionary than revolutionary.Each of the 2013 trends is relevant today. Each has significant momentum and potential to make an impact. And each needs timely consideration. Forward-thinking organisations should consider developing an explicit strategy in each area – even if that strategy is to wait and see.Disruptors:CIO as the Post-digital Catalyst: CIOs can lead the move to tomorrow – reshaping business as usual, and driving innovation. On the one hand, they face unprecedented opportunity for innovation. On the other, the existential threat of disruption. When CIOs harness the convergence of the five postdigital forces, they can change the conversation from systems to capabilities and from technical issues to business impact. Plan big, start small, fail fast, scale appropriately.Mobile Only: Mobile should be top of mind for organisations. The next wave of mobile may fundamentally reshape operations, businesses and marketplaces – delivering information and services to where decisions are made and transactions occur. And the potential goes far beyond smartphones and tablets to include voice, gesture and location-based interactions; device convergence; digital identity in your pocket; and pervasive mobile computing. The very definition of mobile is changing.Social Re-engineering by Design: Businesses are no longer building technologies just to enable interaction – they are now engineering social platforms for specific context – platforms that can relieve rather than serve traditional organisational constraints such as deep hierarchies, command-and-control cultures, physical proximity and resource concentration. Social reengineering can fundamentally transform how work gets done, but it isn’t just a “project.” It’s a strategy.Design as a Discipline: Driven by consumer experience, intuitiveness and simplicity are moving from IT aspirations to enterprise mandates. Design is not a phase; it’s a way of thinking. Beyond look and feel, beyond user interfaces. Isolated in silos of user experience, marketing and product development, individual design functions may be reaching their limits. What’s needed is a collaborative, immersive environment to work together. Design is not just an “IT thing” or a “marketing thing” or a “product engineering thing.” It’s an enterprise thing.Internet Protocol or IPV6: Internet Protocol is the foundation of networking. Businesses need to connect with the outside world, and hence Internet Protocolv6 is for the future and the most urgent issue for today. IP addresses are woven deep into applications and infrastructure, and migration sometimes brings challenges. While there’s no drop dead date for IPv6, the final IPv4 address blocks have already been allocated. Careful and proper adoption will take time for planning, execution and verification. So the time to start is now. Enablers:Finding the Face of Your Data: By combining human insight and intuition with machine number-crunching and visualisation, companies can answer questions they’ve never answered before. More importantly, they can discover important new questions they didn’t know they could ask.Gamification Goes to Work: Driving engagement by embedding gaming in day-to-day business processes. Gamification can encourage engagement and change employee, customer and supplier behavior, creating new ways to meet business objectives. The goal is to recognize and encourage behaviors that drive performance – sometimes in unlikely places. This trend has moved beyond hype and is already demonstrating business value. Gamification in the workplace incorporates social context and location services to motivate and reward desired behaviors in today’s mobile-social world.Reinventing the ERP Engine: Revving up data, hardware, deployment and business model architectures at the core. ERP is no stranger to reinvention, overhauling itself time and again to expand functionality. But the underlying engine has remained fairly constant. That’s now changing.No Such Thing as Hacker-proof: Businesses need to be more proactive and react more rapidly when breaches. The need of the hour is to detect the threats quickly, respond, clean up and adjust business tactics. Be outward-facing, prepared and ready in advance. Idea is to anticipate and prevent such lags wherever possible.The Business of IT: Fragmented processes and systems can prevent IT from effectively delivering on the changing demands of the business. IT may need to transform its own management systems to keep up. Today, CIOs are crafting solutions from industry-leading products and testing business cases at each step. And the potential benefits are worth the investment – not only in driving down costs and better managing risks, but in positioning IT as the business partner in provoking and harvesting disruption in the post-digital era.“The post-digital forces have seen extraordinary attention in the past four years – and each is still in the early stages of adoption, post-digital’s potential can spur both offensive and defensive responses. On one side lies opportunity for innovation. On the other, the existential threat of disruption. Every industry may be affected by the underlying digital forces. Every market may be reshaped by their controlled collision. Our hope is that the Tech Trends reports will help you discover the elements of post digital in your enterprise”, said Rajarshi Sengupta, Senior Director, Deloitte in India.
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Businesses are now structured in a way that almost everyone has some level of decision making ability. Whether the decisions are big or small, they have a direct impact on how successful, efficient and effective individuals are on the job. Till now it was assumed that successful people are basically very smart and hard working. Studies have also found that there is some correlation between IQ and success. But on the other hand it is also true that some people with high IQ often fail in a job, while some with average intelligence have performed exceptionally well.New studies and research suggest that emotional intelligence, measured by Emotional Intelligence Quotient (EQ) is a better predictor of success than traditional measures of Intelligence Quotient (IQ). Emotional intelligence is the foundation of sound decision making, which is at the core of consistently high performance. It is not about being soft, emotional and nice, in fact it is the ability to sense, understand and effectively apply the power and acumen of emotions to facilitate high levels of collaboration and productivity. Employers treat emotional quotient seriously these days and this is why there is a lot of focus on workplace happiness and congeniality. In the business environment, Emotional Quotient is important because it helps you leverage your awareness of emotions for effectiveness in the workplace.People think that being emotional at work can be hazardous. Emitting emotions consistently act negatively in their work and promotions. Display of emotions is assumed as unprofessional, nobody will tolerate outpour of tears at every difficult situation in the office. Also, anger and agitation make the situation difficult at the workplace. So, the control of emotions is must, the emotions can be balanced to have a healthy work lifestyle. Learn to be emotionally connected at work without getting too sensitive. Self-analysisTo be emotionally intelligent you have to analyse yourself and identify your weak and strong areas. Some people get touchy with certain matters or people at work, avoid to do so. Accept every task professionally and work it in a way it should be done. Do not modify it by being emotional for others. If you understand your weaknesses well, you will always be successful in rectifying issues at work.Realistic ApproachBeing overemotional for certain task sometimes leads to an unrealistic plan to accomplish it. Don’t get too excited to accomplish any task.It is always essential to be a realistic planner. As soon as you get the task, be calm and then plan for it. Over excitement is always harmful and aggression is always harmful at workplace.Be Aware Of Your Limitations To work with the limitations is one of the most important aspect of emotional intelligence. Everyone cannot be a expert in all the areas and all the employers understands this. So, do not try to take up any such task in your hand which is not possible to accomplish. It is always better to leave the things which you cannot do rather taking it and show your imperfection. Emotions are involved in every human interaction and are a powerful factor in the equation when individuals, teams, managers and organisations as a whole work together. Employees’ EQ has everything to do with the quality of decisions they make and on the results a business achieves. With knowledge, training and experiential learning, people can learn to manage their emotions instead of being run by them. Bringing a balance in your emotions will be a long process. Do not expect any miracles immediately. Therefore, do not get impatient and quit midway. Make yourself feel as secure as possible to begin with.(The author is Vice President, Global Talent Management of Bristlecone, a Mahindra Group Company)
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Geoff Barnes, CEO of Baker Tilly International — the eight largest accounting firm in the world — talks about the global accounting environment, the need to implement IRFS and how the audit profession will evolve over the next few years in an interview with BW|Businessworld's Abraham C. MathewsIndia has been in the news for being one of the main voices against mandatory International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), having being sitting on its implementation for several years now. How does the global accounting community see India and its objections?We are in an environment where we work in a global market place. That market place requires accounts, and financial statements to be structured using one formula, a set of standards. In that context, it is disappointing to see that the Indian accounting community, as is the American accounting community, is pushing back on an implementation date on reporting standards. It is disappointing not just from a boring auditor perspective, but it would seem we are living in a world where countries should be looking to attract investment, and any obstacles placed by countries in the way of that strategy seems to be disappointing. Indeed, there are many countries today not complying, but India is the biggest outside of the US, not just because of population, but India is a major international player, and investors would expect to see companies in which they are investing to have their financial statements prepared using a global set of standards.But India's main opposition seems to be to Fair Value accounting (as opposed to historical cost, where value of assets are not written up to reflect current market value. The argument is that it becomes a tool in the hands of scrupulous promoters who want to pump up their balance sheets), which is integral to IFRS; the argument is that it will allow promoters to disguise creative accounting in the guise of marking up to fair value.No one is suggesting implementation of IFRS is going to be an easy transition. But if you end up with everybody opting out, where are the standards. And different countries do have to make a quantum leap in this. There is little point in having standards with opt-out provisions. So we have India saying that it wants to opt out on fair value accounting, and some other country wants to opt out of leases, how will we have a unified set of standards that everybody is familiar with?Where do you think is the accounting profession going to be five years down the line, how does it have to evolve?The fact of the matter is that published accounts for stakeholders are too complicated. We're professional accountants; they're complex even for us to understand. There has to be radical changes in the way in which accounts are put together. For example, BP; their share options note runs into 12 pages. Who is going to read that, to take a decision? It is complying with a number of requirements. I see a simplification process needed, and it is being looked at by many countries. And that will percolate through international reporting standards. Accounts will have to be simplified for everybody. Not just shareholders, but also other stakeholders like credit rating agencies, and so on.But how do you simplify the current reporting framework?If you look at a set of accounts now, it runs into hundreds of pages, we have to stand back and look at what are the obligations and who is it for. I think the regulators should be harmonising much more. But accounts are being prepared to comply with several regulatory requirements, and that needs to be standardized. You got to remember that 97-98 per cent of the businesses in the world are owner managed businesses; they don't need hundred pages of financial notes to enable them to run their business to give them the comfort to run their businesses.Auditing is now the profession that nobody wants to touch. It is the first to take the blame; few people want to get into it as a career. What is to be done?One of the things we need to tell the public is what it is we as auditors do and what it is we don't. People think that if a company is sued, it is the auditors' fault. All Companies Acts globally place responsibility for preparation of accounts firmly on directors. Our responsibility is to audit them. Is the audit brief wide enough? There is talk in Europe to widen the audit brief to include discovery of fraud. But we are not looking for fraud when we do an audit, we might find it, but it is not our main objective.But what can be done to give more comfort to shareholders, seeing that auditors are their only assurance to the authenticity of their numbers? Is there need for more regulation, or does the profession itself need a revolutionary change?Let us say things started to change when Enron collapsed. Till 2002 internationally, we were a self regulated profession, Enron brought in the PCAOB and after that we became a non self regulated profession. And we as a profession internationally embraced that very well. Frankly, we were able to grow. Of course, during that period we had a number of frauds, even in India. You will always have frauds when human beings are involved. You will never ever be able to stop that. But the way I look at it, out of every 1000 reports, 999 are trouble free, as an example. This is not the time for castigating the audit profession. There is nothing endemically wrong with the audit profession.However, this has left the audit profession struggling for breath. Fees, keeping clients all seem to be a struggle, not to mention higher degrees of conflict in interest…Most firms, particularly the Big 4, see audit fees as an aggregate of their total revenues dropping. There are a lot of reasons for that; Right or wrong, audit has become a commodity, and like all commodities, people shop around for the best price. So client loyalty is not what it was. You have to be up to scratch, just because you did an audit for twenty years, there is no guarantee you will keep getting the service n the 21st year.Isn't that also a function of falling standards?Clients expect that our standards are not compromised, nor will we compromise. Globally the profession is built on very high ethical level, that's not going to change. The fact that we have to provide that at a lower cost means we have to structure our business in a different way. So I think we got a situation where audit fees are falling off. They are not going to disappear, but it is viewed as a commodity. That is a challenge and we will deal with it. The other challenge is that many firms are finding it difficult to retain audit managers to become audit partners. That's an international phenomena. While young people, we demand the brightest of talent, these kids are coming into a profession that is dominated by software change, and what the big firms are finding is that software is replacing brain power.But with more lucrative avenues opening up in consulting and advisory are we not going to see audit firms moving there? Especially with more regulatory pressure on audit firms to not give other services globally.We are now seeing our member firms being asked to do much more consulting with their audit clients. Our revenues are currently $3.3 bn, out of which 52 per cent came from audit, 28 per cent from tax 20 per cent from consulting. That portion is growing and that is where the market is. All accounting firms today offer consulting and that is not going to change.
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Looking at today’s smartphones, you’d never believe they born at least 40 years ago, if you consider the day that Motorola engineer Marty Cooper made the first cell phone call as the start of the revolution. If you were to as much as hold in your hand, an iPhone, an HTC One, or an Xperia Z, you would find it difficult to associate these beautiful devices with the clunky cell phones that first made their way into the hands of consumers.I made my acquaintance with mobile phones some time late 1995, when we were still using pagers. Funny things they were, those pagers, making everyone look ridiculously like doctors with no emergencies to rush to when they beeped urgently. You would rush to a landline (except we never used the term landline as all phones were land) and try to look busy enough and wanted enough to justify those pager beeps.But then came the real mobile phones, at a time when cordless phones were still frowned upon by MTNL and were sort of fancy. Those mobile phones were a marvel as they untethered you from being connected only from a phone plugged to a wall – depending on the signal you got, of course. But cellular companies were setting up quickly and we began to see more and more devices, eagerly figuring out how to test them out and work out review processes. My first one was an Ericsson GH-something, a little red thing with barely a few words showing for a text message. Our initial tests were all focused on sound quality on calls, battery life, ability to receive a signal under different conditions, how heated up the phone would get and physical characteristics such as the size of the aerial, and the overall looks and sturdiness. The Nokia phones could survive a drop from the second floor and the stairs in my office building were neatly designed for us to be able to send those hapless devices hurtling down. We also worked hard at creating identical conditions that would allow us to test phones fairly.From rather early on, I adopted Samsung phones because those were the best at bright high-contrast displays and I remember my first, a True-I which was shaped like a curvy Porsche and which I was so possessive and sensitive about I’d spring up if anyone touched it as it lay on my table.But involved as I and my colleagues were in mobile technology, none of us could ever have guessed the scenario that exists today, in a world gone so wireless that to be un-connected even for a few minutes causes many people restlessness and anxiety. There are still people around me who ask me for suggestions on a simple phone that only makes phone calls and such phones do exist, but they’re getting to be a rare commodity as all mobiles turn smart. The earlier phones may have been able to connect to cellular networks and to each other, but there was no connection with the internet. And what a revolution there was when it did come. We take connectivity on our phones completely for granted today, and rarely stop to think how this has impacted the way we relate to each other, do our work, and stay abreast of what interests us.It’s certainly not been all good – as with anything we human beings make. There’s an addiction to technology, a reliance on it that many feel is unwarranted, and of course, as much misuse as use. But overall, I’d certainly say that the mobile has been more of an empowerment than a problem, specially for those who had no connection beyond the limits of the small world around them.And now as we go on to the next 40 years, it’s equally difficult to predict what our connected life will be like. The mobile phone may become obsolete as wearable technology makes its way into our world and digital surfaces and augmented reality bring in what almost seems like a parallel universe. Our brains get rewired and the brains of an entire new generation get wired differently as they’re “born mobile.” Who knows what the connected future that started with mobile phones will be like – but a the very least, it will be fascinating.
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India has one of the world’s youngest populations, with over 30 per cent of Indian citizens being between the ages of 1 and 14. All these individuals constitute a market for those who publish books for children (including Scholastic). The children’s book industry is a flourishing segment and is poised for greater growth in India. The Indian market has several local players and it is therefore difficult to estimate the size and actual growth rate of the same but we would expect it to grow at a healthy 10-15 per cent in the coming 5-10 years. The industry is being transformed in terms of content, scope, and market potential. Publishers today find themselves in a very dynamic environment within which there is a greater trend towards experimentation with new ideas and genres. Among these is speculative fiction, an umbrella term for a lot of the newer kinds of fantastical fiction including fantasy, horror, science fiction, supernatural fiction and more. Innovation & PresentationThe market for children’s books is expanding rapidly. Talented new authors, with new perspectives are presenting exciting ideas every day. There is constant innovation not only in the literature itself, but also in the themes and the way they are being presented to appeal to young readers. Publishers are also looking for magic formulae and closely studying market trends to gauge what works and what does not, and most importantly to see what the reader wants. Authors of children’s books are now willing to make more informed choices about the kind of books they want to write and the themes they choose. For instance, the stories in Scholastic Young Adventure series and the Scholastic Junior Adventure series are accompanied by maps and games to enhance the novelty of these books. The market for children's books is further expanding with an increase in e-readers. The usage of myriad digital platforms and other popular devices, like tablets and smartphones making books easily available to read, buy and store. While stand alone e-book readers may still be limited in number and not taken off in a huge way, the growing proliferation of mobile phones capable of supporting such platforms will eventually provide a boost to this segment. In this fiercely competitive industry, every publisher is trying to think out of the box, whether it is in terms of the kind of books that are being planned, the kind of covers that are being done or even the names that are being given to imprints and ventures. In terms of innovation one of our forthcoming titles, 2, a graphic novel co-written by the well-known author, Paro Anand and a Swedish author, Orjan Persson, has two covers for the two stories that it will contain, so you will have to turn the book around to read the other story. Though most publishers keep these things a closely guarded secret, there is talk of higher advances against royalty, and consequently better royalty terms being offered to authors by publishers. The result is a growing number of aspiring authors who are willing to publish and make a profession out of writing. In the retail sector, there is an organised effort to promote books, and publishers are partnering with retail outlets in the promotional campaigns. With so much happening in terms of product, marketing efforts have also been ramped up across the board. Increasing marketing efforts have been noted, catering to young adults, in the wake of popular best-selling series, such as Harry Potter, Twilight and, more recently, The Hunger Games. Although increased marketing and digital development efforts are expensive, such investments are projected to boost profitability in the next five years. One sees innovative efforts which go above and beyond the usual “book launches in hotels” motif. In any case, marketing spend for this once staid industry is definitely increasing, and we will see much more advertising in the days to come. Gone are the days of books which sell themselves. Television, print, and collaborative marketing is on the rise in this once very traditional industry.Without quoting figures, one can safely say that marketing budgets are definitely on the rise as promotion is as integral part of selling a book these days.Tie-ups with vernacular publishers are common, especially where translation rights and sales are concerned. The idea is to make intellectual property available to the greatest number of readers in the most efficient way possible. Publishing in the end, is a reflection of the interests and mores of society. As Indian society changes, so shall the publishing industry change, to serve it. The writer is managing director, Scholastic Indiabusinessworldbooks (at) gmail (dot) com
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