Rare Insights!

Q: Take us through some of the investments that you have made while you have been with Rare.

A: As I see it, the company has an opportunity. You have to figure out how the company can position itself well enough to seize the opportunity.

Q: You are sort of looking at different sectors from hotels to media to lifescience companies. How do you sort of sit and figure out which sectors you want to maximise on or the companies that you want to maximise on? How do you actually spot an opportunity and how much of that is gut and instinct?

A: It is a little bit of analysis and a bit of instinct. A lot of decision-making is largely based on betting on the promoter's ability to seize the opportunity. So, the mental process that you go through is the same. The relative size of companies could vary. So, I guess the mental process is the same.

Q: How many of you actually huddle together and make that decision?

A: Three of us.

Q: Does it work like a debating society at that point? Is there one vote that reigns supreme?

A: Not really. There is a little bit of debate. Typically, we look for companies that have a large addressable opportunity and the rest of the things we document it and discuss it out point by point. So, it really doesn't take much time.

-Rajiv Agrawal, a Principal at Rare Enterprises.

Arthur Andersen

The son of a Norwegian immigrant, Andersen was left on his own at the age of 16 after the death of his parents. He worked during the day as a mailboy and attended school at night. Eventually he was hired as the assistant to the controller of Allis-Chalmers in Chicago where he became intrigued with the work of independent public accountants. He received a degree as a certified public accountant at the University of Illinois in 1908; at age 23 he was the youngest CPA in Illinois. In 1917, after attending courses at night while working full time, he graduated from the Kellogg School at Northwestern University with a bachelor's degree in business.

In 1913 at the age of 28, he entered into business for himself under the firm name of Arthur Andersen & Co.

Andersen, who headed the firm until his death in 1947, was a zealous supporter of high standards in the accounting industry. A stickler for honesty, he argued that accountants' responsibility was to investors, not their clients. During the early years, it is reputed that Andersen was approached by an executive from a local rail utility to sign off on accounts containing flawed accounting, or else face the loss of a major client. Andersen refused in no uncertain terms, replying that he would not sign the accounts "for all the money in America." Leonard Spacek, who succeeded Andersen at the founder's death, continued this emphasis on honesty. For many years, Andersen's motto was "Think straight, talk straight."

Risk, Courage, Ability, Motivation, Purpose

• Most people would rather be certain they’re miserable, than risk being happy.
• The cynic knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.
• Ability is what you’re capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it.
• What is a friend? I will tell you….. It is someone with whom you dare to be yourself.
• One isn’t necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency.
• However brilliant an action may be, it should not be accounted great when it is not the result of great purpose.

-I liked these quotations from the Sunday Times of India, April 27th 2008.

Lethargy

I need to take my career seriously now. I have been lethargic for a very long time now, since last many years.

लतीफा ...

एक महिला अपने कुत्ते को लेकर जानवरों के डॉक्टर के पास पहुंची और बोली - ''मेरे कुत्ते को कुछ हो गया है डॉक्टर । यह उठ नहीं रहा है .... । कुछ कीजिये। ''

डॉक्टर ने कुत्ते को टेबल पर लिटाया और उसकी जांच करने बाद बोला - ''आपका कुत्ता मर चुका है। उसकी नब्ज बन्द हो चुकी है।''

महिला कुत्ते को कुछ ज्यादा ही प्यार करती थी। वह इस बात को सहज स्वीकार नहीं कर सकी। बोली - ''नहीं, नहीं डॉक्टर साहब, ये कैसे मर सकता है ? आप किसी और तरीके से जांच कीजिये प्लीज।''

डॉक्टर दूसरे कमरे में गया और एक बिल्ली के साथ वापस आया। बिल्ली टेबल पर कूद कर चढ़ गई और उसने कुत्ते को सूंघना शुरू किया। सिर से पैर तक कुत्ते को सूंघने के बाद बिल्ली कूदकर वापस दूसरे कमरे में भाग गई।

''अब ये पक्का है कि तुम्हारा कुत्ता मर चुका है।'' डॉक्टर ने महिला से कहा। महिला ने अंतत: मान लिया कि कुत्ता मर गया है। बोली - ''शायद आप सही कह रहे हैं। बताइये आपकी फीस कितनी हुई। ''''550 रूपये'' - डॉक्टर ने जवाब दिया। महिला को झटका लगा। ''इतना ज्यादा क्यों ? आखिर आपने किया ही क्या है ?''''

देखिये,'' डॉक्टर ने उसे समझाते हुये कहा '' 50 रूपये मेरी फीस है और बाकी 500 रूपये कैट स्कैन के हैं।''

Life!

"Every major decision point in life usually has multiple solutions — that is what saves us from what would otherwise be a very monochromatic world. Successful people are those who can make career decisions with two things in mind — `Will I be happy at work’ and `Will I be happy at home’. As long as those two questions are answered, things such as what you do or where you work become irrelevant. "

-Murugan Vasudevan, Cisco.

Liked it!

As a youthful MBA aspirant, Madhusudhan Kela was rejected at the interview stage in his first attempt to get into the Somaiya Institute of Management Studies. He scored well in the logical reasoning and quantitative aptitude sections, but had trouble with English.

The interview panel did not take kindly to his replying to every question in Hindi. Far from being discouraged, Kela appeared for the written test the following year. His scoring pattern was the same, but he still made it to the interview stage due to a high aggregate score.

“I don’t see how the outcome can be any different this time; how many times will you keep applying with such poor communication skills?” one of the interviewers asked him. “Till such time you refuse to acknowledge the fact that I have managed to come this far despite my weak English,” Kela shot back.

The panelists were impressed by his impetuosity and granted him admission, but with the rider that he will have to improve his language skills within three months or else quit the course. This is just one of the many instances that reveal the fierce determination to overcome adversities in the man who currently heads equities at Reliance Mutual Fund, India’s number one asset management firm overseeing funds in excess of Rs 90,000 crore.

Source of the article

One more such quote

Purpose in life

किसी महान कार्य के लिए कड़ी मेहनत करने का अवसर दे कर, ज़िंदगी हमें सबसे बड़ा ईनाम देती है

-शिव खेड़ा, जीत आपकी (Hindi version of "You Can Win")

Swaminomics: How the reforms changed Bollywood

Few people think of the revolution in the film industry as a success of economic liberalisation. Yet, it was made possible only by the deregulation of a great many sectors - filmmaking, banking, capital markets, TV, theatre-building - plus the lifting of price control on tickets.

Click here for the full article

Quote-Unquote

Q: If you were still with Morgan Stanley and I sent you a fresh MBA recruit, what will be your advice to him?

A: There are hundreds of smart people who come to my office. What I see is in short supply today is courage, risk-taking, leadership, integrity, patience, faith. I think those are the qualities I would encourage an MBA to develop and discourage this false prop that I'm an MBA and so I have arrived. I can see why Bill Gates or Dhirubhai Ambani did well. These sort of soft, touchy-feely qualities are the ones which are really in short supply today. I don't think education can get you there. I think life can get you there. Yes education is very important but I don't think your life begins once your education ends. I think your real education begins when life starts. So what you do post-education, in your 20s and 30s is very vital.

- Vinod Sethi, one of India's most respected investors.

Munnar

Munnar, a hill station in Kerala...

you must brutally and unflinchingly question

While this may seem the simplest enough line of questioning to follow, it is in fact the most difficult to live. For to be honest to it, you must brutally and unflinchingly question. It is not widely popular, because it is time consuming. You will not arrive at your answers today, or tomorrow, or probably even in this lifetime. It will not seem like focus to many, but it is far more satisfying than focus, for like the tea-taster, you will have tasted 10,000 cups of tea, and spat them out, before you will have found that one perfect and most beautiful brew. You will have sharpened and honed your standards of perfection, of purity, and with each step up the short list, you will have the confidence that comes from edging towards absolute- and not half- Truth.

Why would you want to do it?

Probably because that emptiness you feel from time to time, in the living and the loving of everyday life, is that nagging sense, that this, whatever this is at this point of time for any of you who have felt it, is just not it.

- Taken from an online blog article "The Neti Principle"

Creativity

"How much are you paid?"

"I have read it written that I'm getting Rs 25 lakhs for a movie. It's under 10, actually. For Roja. I was paid Rs 25,000. I don't like to demand high amounts because I think that will rob me of my creativity. "

-A.R. Rehman, answering to a question about the money he charged. Quoted from an interview that was taken soon after he entered the industry.

Allah

"Hamesha mandir-o-masjid mein woh nahi rahta

Suna hai bachchon mein chhup ke woh khelta bhi hai..."

-Nida Fazli ka yeh sher mujhe bahut achchha laga tha...

Nida Fazli

After Kabeer, I have found so much depth in Nida Fazli's poetry only, if you see the Hindi/ Hindustani Poetry. It was a pleasant surprise to see his poetry now available on the web also.

If you get time, do have a read of some of his books like Khoya Hua sa kuchh and Aankhon bhar aakaash.

I am giving links to some of his my personal favorites, and the collection as well. But remember, the poems given at the web collections are neither the all of his poems, and nor his best ones. You will need to buy the books to know what he is.

"किरन-किरन अलसाता सूरज
पलक-पलक खुलती नींदें
धीमे-धीमे बिखर रहा है
ज़र्रा-ज़र्रा जाने कौन..."


मस्जिदों-मन्दिरों की दुनिया में

हम्द1

निदा फ़ाज़ली की रचनाएँ

सोच-सोच कर उम्र बिता दी

कल कर लेंगे कल कर लेंगे
यूँ हम उम्र तमाम करेंगे

सोच-सोच कर उम्र बिता दी
कोई अच्छा काम करेंगे

कोई अच्छा काम करेंगे
खुद को फिर बदनाम करेंगे

Credit Cards

Credit Card Companies/ Banks.... How they bluff us...


Cleck Here




.

Bollywood

Last 2-3 years have seen the emergence of a new bollywood cinema where art and creativity meets the truth of life and emotions. We saw Mithoon's music take us to the level only A R Rehman's music was capable of. We saw amazing scripts from Jaideep Sahni, Vishal Bharadwaj, Anurag Basu, Nagesh Kuknoor, Anurag Kashyap, the 'Black' team, the 'Rang De Basanti' team and the 'Munnabhai' team. Rang De Basanti made me hear such a deep meaning dialogue I never, in even my dreams, thought I may hear in my life in a movie.

Bollywood is surely going through one of its best times after 60s and 70s.

The movies I liked in recent past were, and not in order of preference but ramdomness, Rang De Basanti, Black, Iqbal, Chak De India, Life in a Metro, Khosla Ka Ghosla, Omkara, Yahaa, Parineeta, Lage raho Munnabhai, Kabul Express, Black Friday, Gandhi My Father, Parjania... and many ones I'd be missing to see or recall here.

Quote from Jaideep Sahni

"Making a grand business, like most things to come out of a human mind, usually chooses the path of least resistance. The path which wants to shoot straight to the box office success riding on the rocket of whatever the latest trick is, in dialogue, in editing, in music, in the look,....."

- Bollywood Script Writer Jaideep Sahni in an article published in Economic Times, 29th Dec. 07. Jaideep Sahni has written the scripts of movies like Company, Khosla ka ghosla, Chak de India and Aaja Nachle. Since the times of Saleem- Javed, no script writer(s) has got so much acclaim as him.

Better World Through Research

Everyone has heard about the Bose speaker systems. Some of you also know that Bose Corp has invented the most effective suspension system for cars also. Person behind all these inventions is Prof. Amar Bose. A Bengali Indian American MIT professor, he's truly a great blend of a genius researcher and an entrepreneur with conviction. I was overwhelmed by reading about him some time back.

---------------------------------

From Various websites:

About Audio Speakers:

Actually it started while doing graduate work at MIT in the 1950s, Dr. Bose decided to purchase a new stereo system. He was disappointed to find that speakers with impressive technical specifications failed to reproduce the realism of a live performance. He aimed to design a speaker that would emulate the symphony hall experience in the home. His speaker system was one of the first to make use of sound reflecting off walls and the ceiling.

About Car Suspension System:

For Bose, the search began with a question he asked himself several decades ago. “I wondered,” he told Popular Science magazine, “what a car suspension could do without hardware constraints, if you could have any force you wanted, at any time, between the body and the wheel.”

Bose focused on figuring out mathematically what kind of performance was theoretically possible. Five years of mathematical analysis revealed a tremendous performance gap.

Throughout his life, Amar Gopal Bose has had the avid curiosity of a child, the tenacity to follow it through, and the gumption to flout conventional thinking.

In 1980 he decided to work on it. As is his wont, he ignored the 100-year-old beaten track of automakers who had perfected fluid-based suspension hardware. He threw away the hardware model, and along with it the limitations.

His Teaching:

At his alma mater MIT, when he was hired to teach network theory, he threw away the syllabus and confronted his students with nine blackboards. He urged students to ask tough questions, expected section leaders to think out loud to illustrate the problem-solving process, abolished exam time limits and allowed open books.

William H. Brody, now the president of Johns Hopkins University, says of him: “He would walk into a lecture to 350 students, and you could hear a pin drop. He commanded a lot of respect, because of the force of his intellect and his total dedication to the students. His class gave me the courage to tackle high-risk problems; it equipped me with the problem-solving skills I needed to be successful in several careers. Amar Bose taught me how to think.”

On Bose Corporation:

At the end of the day it’s Bose’s way of thinking that remains such a unique gift: Simply put, it is just a wondrously dogged courage to chase an idea to its very limit. Bose Corporation may have a billion-dollar turnover, but Bose says he started the company to chase ideas, not make money.

“I would have been fired a hundred times at a company run by MBAs,” he told Popular Science magazine. “But I never went into business to make money. I went into business so that I could do interesting things that hadn’t been done before.”

So number crunchers’ myopic obsession with the bottom line was out, a commitment to pure research was in.

Bose says it’s the principle of allowing bright minds to search for answers that was more important to him

Popular Science, in a long, admiring essay, sums it up best about the merit of Amar Bose’s mindset and contribution.

“The value of Amar Bose—and by extension, his company—isn’t so much in the things he has invented, but in the sense of possibility he inspires,” the magazine wrote. “Bose reminds us that we could all afford to be much more skyward-looking, far-fetched and curious, and that we could all believe more strongly in our own potential to create.”

Links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amar_Bose

http://www.siliconeer.com/past_issues/2005/january2005.html