If I thought Diwali was strange last year, this year beats it hands down. I'm sitting on my couch surrounded by boxes. We are shifting home tomorrow. Diwali was always a time when your house looked its best all lit up and sparkling clean. Mine couldnt possibly be worse. If its not the boxes, its the paper and bills all over which are driving me a little crazy.
A first time when I am packing the contents of my house myself and coming to the conclusion that I have far too many clothes and shoes. Sentiments are fine things except when you come across boxes of childhood memorabilia that need to be transported and then arranged somewhere. With the paucity of space in London houses, that is always going to be a problem here. So not only do I have my stamp and coin and other collections, this year I had stored all the wine bottles we drank too - just to see consumption levels at the end of the year.
God, I am a hoarder!!!
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Thursday, November 08, 2007
Some new technologies: my only problem when I come across new technologies is comparing them to what currently exists. I feel like I have been living in a blackhole.
Well for starters, how do we currently access Internet on our mobile phones. You have a WAP enables browser and the mobile operator has, at teh very minimum, a GPRS network. Thereafter, the web pages which can be browsed comfortably are
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
Aging Europe
I think I was off my blog around that time and forgot to record the events of the August bank holiday. We had planned to spend the weekend hiking, with Innsbruck as the base camp. My job had started just a couple of weeks ago and we were still getting used to me spending such a lot of time away from home. 
Well, as I and a lot of other intelligent folks have said before - absence makes the heart go fonder - so well....there was a lot of romance in the air.
Well, as I and a lot of other intelligent folks have said before - absence makes the heart go fonder - so well....there was a lot of romance in the air.
We reached on Saturday afternoon, checked out the town, got our tickets for the cable car and by the time we got back to the hotel, it must have been around 6-30 in the evening. And that is when we realised that some of the essential elements for a romantic evening were missing. Not a problem, right? - after all, you just have to run down to a chemist/ pharmacie. And thats where you are wrong. Saturday evening, 'late' evening, not a single pharmacy open in the whole town! Most embarrasing but we still went around asking in a couple of shops, just in case they have some emergency stock for tourists. From the reactions we got, you would think that we had asked for, at least, marijuana if not harder stuff. People drew back beind their counters with utter disbelief on their faces as if to say - 'How dare you even ask me for such a thing'. If this was not enough, nothing opens on Sunday - NOTHING! Is it the age or lack of passion - still dont know what to read from the experience. 
Anyway, here are some pictures - from the trek, from the cable car - which, by the way, was an amazing experience - me never having sat in an open cable car in the mountains before and finally from the Swarovski museum. I thought that would be a tick-off from a list but it turned out to be really worthwhile.
Sunday, November 04, 2007
I have been bitten! - one more to join the club of the mindless followers. As usual, it was curiousity which led to my downfall.
Whats all the craziness about??
So I entered the fatal words and pressed enter. A perfectly innocuous page appeared asking only for my email id and password....and before I knew it I was hooked.
A way to catch up with friends, which is good - am much to busy to be able to write long drawn mails these days; end up thinking of them during the long waits at airports or on flights - 'I wonder what she is up to these days' etc etc..
A way to remember what I read over this year, my thoughts as soon as I finished the book, the phrases I liked through the course of the book - WOW! Wish I had this when I was reading Moments of Being....and by the way, I loved the title of that particular book more than I liked the book - Moments of being.......
So I have spent a lot of useful hours on the facebook site this weekend - hours that should have been more usefully spent packing the house - lets see how long it manages to engross me.
And heard this one on Scrubs, liked it: 'More than a feeling', Boston
Whats all the craziness about??
So I entered the fatal words and pressed enter. A perfectly innocuous page appeared asking only for my email id and password....and before I knew it I was hooked.
A way to catch up with friends, which is good - am much to busy to be able to write long drawn mails these days; end up thinking of them during the long waits at airports or on flights - 'I wonder what she is up to these days' etc etc..
A way to remember what I read over this year, my thoughts as soon as I finished the book, the phrases I liked through the course of the book - WOW! Wish I had this when I was reading Moments of Being....and by the way, I loved the title of that particular book more than I liked the book - Moments of being.......
So I have spent a lot of useful hours on the facebook site this weekend - hours that should have been more usefully spent packing the house - lets see how long it manages to engross me.
And heard this one on Scrubs, liked it: 'More than a feeling', Boston
Friday, November 02, 2007
VC fund raising
Trying to make a note of VC firms that I come across which have raised funds. Shasta Ventures - raised a fund of $200 million; interestingly, they also make investments in software. I have been searching for European VCs which are making investments in the SAAS space and didnt find any!
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Dont know where to start
Some of us are born entrepreneurs and the rest are the arm chair variety. How does one go from germination of an idea, to the implementation and subsequently creating traction. Social networking - the new buzz word. There are a number of ideas which can be developed on the strenth of the network - but for any social site to be a success, the one key requirement is the number of people on it - and doesnt that become a chicken and egg story. How do you get people to your site without already having people on the site.
We've been searching for a house for the past one and a half months. Found one - hallelujah! But that got me thinking - how useful would a site be, one which was like a review website for houses. So, if I am moving out of my current house, I give feedback about the house, the area, the landlord, advantages, problems faced. Wouldnt that be useful!! And of course, put a little bit of the fear of God into landlords. Right now we are all shooting in the dark. And so we keep searching for a house every 6 months to a year; move in with trepidation; and after a week of living, heave a sigh of relief or start counting the days to when you can use the six month break clause.
And, of course, advertising would certainly be a big element of the business model - agents, movers/ packers, goods for sale, goods for rentals, rooms for share
But then for this idea to be successful, I need a core number of entries which gets the website visited......how do you tackle that.....whatsay???
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Regularity
I have been away from here for so long - but its been on the mind - that I'm running and running and missing out on my own life. So the recording must start again - because these days are mind-boggling. The work is what I have wanted to do and the travel I didnt even imagine - between London, Paris and Munich, I dont have a home anywhere but a base everywhere.
Waiting for Tweedledeedum to finish with the exits so we can run for a swim.........I still cant breathe and I know that whenever I do start, the 12 ounds will mean so much more exertion and exercise. But I kind of like it the way it is except for the fact that I always need a pool I can stand in mid-way. Wonder if it will work out post the house shift.
Waiting for Tweedledeedum to finish with the exits so we can run for a swim.........I still cant breathe and I know that whenever I do start, the 12 ounds will mean so much more exertion and exercise. But I kind of like it the way it is except for the fact that I always need a pool I can stand in mid-way. Wonder if it will work out post the house shift.
Sunday, August 05, 2007
I liked reading it
Remarks of Bill Gates
Harvard Commencement
(Text as prepared for delivery)
President Bok, former President Rudenstine, incoming President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, parents, and especially, the graduates:
I’ve been waiting more than 30 years to say this: “Dad, I always told you I’d come back and get my degree.”
I want to thank Harvard for this timely honor. I’ll be changing my job next year … and it will be nice to finally have a college degree on my resume.
I applaud the graduates today for taking a much more direct route to your degrees. For my part, I’m just happy that the Crimson has called me “Harvard’s most successful dropout.” I guess that makes me valedictorian of my own special class … I did the best of everyone who failed.
But I also want to be recognized as the guy who got Steve Ballmer to drop out of business school. I’m a bad influence. That’s why I was invited to speak at your graduation. If I had spoken at your orientation, fewer of you might be here today.
Harvard was just a phenomenal experience for me. Academic life was fascinating. I used to sit in on lots of classes I hadn’t even signed up for. And dorm life was terrific. I lived up at Radcliffe, in Currier House. There were always lots of people in my dorm room late at night discussing things, because everyone knew I didn’t worry about getting up in the morning. That’s how I came to be the leader of the anti-social group. We clung to each other as a way of validating our rejection of all those social people.
Radcliffe was a great place to live. There were more women up there, and most of the guys were science-math types. That combination offered me the best odds, if you know what I mean. This is where I learned the sad lesson that improving your odds doesn’t guarantee success.
One of my biggest memories of Harvard came in January 1975, when I made a call from Currier House to a company in Albuquerque that had begun making the world’s first personal computers. I offered to sell them software.
I worried that they would realize I was just a student in a dorm and hang up on me. Instead they said: “We’re not quite ready, come see us in a month,” which was a good thing, because we hadn’t written the software yet. From that moment, I worked day and night on this little extra credit project that marked the end of my college education and the beginning of a remarkable journey with Microsoft.
What I remember above all about Harvard was being in the midst of so much energy and intelligence. It could be exhilarating, intimidating, sometimes even discouraging, but always challenging. It was an amazing privilege – and though I left early, I was transformed by my years at Harvard, the friendships I made, and the ideas I worked on.
But taking a serious look back … I do have one big regret.
I left Harvard with no real awareness of the awful inequities in the world – the appalling disparities of health, and wealth, and opportunity that condemn millions of people to lives of despair.
I learned a lot here at Harvard about new ideas in economics and politics. I got great exposure to the advances being made in the sciences.
But humanity’s greatest advances are not in its discoveries – but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity. Whether through democracy, strong public education, quality health care, or broad economic opportunity – reducing inequity is the highest human achievement.
I left campus knowing little about the millions of young people cheated out of educational opportunities here in this country. And I knew nothing about the millions of people living in unspeakable poverty and disease in developing countries.
It took me decades to find out.
You graduates came to Harvard at a different time. You know more about the world’s inequities than the classes that came before. In your years here, I hope you’ve had a chance to think about how – in this age of accelerating technology – we can finally take on these inequities, and we can solve them.
Imagine, just for the sake of discussion, that you had a few hours a week and a few dollars a month to donate to a cause – and you wanted to spend that time and money where it would have the greatest impact in saving and improving lives. Where would you spend it?
For Melinda and for me, the challenge is the same: how can we do the most good for the greatest number with the resources we have.
During our discussions on this question, Melinda and I read an article about the millions of children who were dying every year in poor countries from diseases that we had long ago made harmless in this country. Measles, malaria, pneumonia, hepatitis B, yellow fever. One disease I had never even heard of, rotavirus, was killing half a million kids each year – none of them in the United States.
We were shocked. We had just assumed that if millions of children were dying and they could be saved, the world would make it a priority to discover and deliver the medicines to save them. But it did not. For under a dollar, there were interventions that could save lives that just weren’t being delivered.
If you believe that every life has equal value, it’s revolting to learn that some lives are seen as worth saving and others are not. We said to ourselves: “This can’t be true. But if it is true, it deserves to be the priority of our giving.”
So we began our work in the same way anyone here would begin it. We asked: “How could the world let these children die?”
The answer is simple, and harsh. The market did not reward saving the lives of these children, and governments did not subsidize it. So the children died because their mothers and their fathers had no power in the market and no voice in the system.
But you and I have both.
We can make market forces work better for the poor if we can develop a more creative capitalism – if we can stretch the reach of market forces so that more people can make a profit, or at least make a living, serving people who are suffering from the worst inequities. We also can press governments around the world to spend taxpayer money in ways that better reflect the values of the people who pay the taxes.
If we can find approaches that meet the needs of the poor in ways that generate profits for business and votes for politicians, we will have found a sustainable way to reduce inequity in the world. This task is open-ended. It can never be finished. But a conscious effort to answer this challenge will change the world.
I am optimistic that we can do this, but I talk to skeptics who claim there is no hope. They say: “Inequity has been with us since the beginning, and will be with us till the end – because people just … don’t … care.” I completely disagree.
I believe we have more caring than we know what to do with.
All of us here in this Yard, at one time or another, have seen human tragedies that broke our hearts, and yet we did nothing – not because we didn’t care, but because we didn’t know what to do. If we had known how to help, we would have acted.
The barrier to change is not too little caring; it is too much complexity.
To turn caring into action, we need to see a problem, see a solution, and see the impact. But complexity blocks all three steps.
Even with the advent of the Internet and 24-hour news, it is still a complex enterprise to get people to truly see the problems. When an airplane crashes, officials immediately call a press conference. They promise to investigate, determine the cause, and prevent similar crashes in the future.
But if the officials were brutally honest, they would say: “Of all the people in the world who died today from preventable causes, one half of one percent of them were on this plane. We’re determined to do everything possible to solve the problem that took the lives of the one half of one percent.”
The bigger problem is not the plane crash, but the millions of preventable deaths.
We don’t read much about these deaths. The media covers what’s new – and millions of people dying is nothing new. So it stays in the background, where it’s easier to ignore. But even when we do see it or read about it, it’s difficult to keep our eyes on the problem. It’s hard to look at suffering if the situation is so complex that we don’t know how to help. And so we look away.
If we can really see a problem, which is the first step, we come to the second step: cutting through the complexity to find a solution.
Finding solutions is essential if we want to make the most of our caring. If we have clear and proven answers anytime an organization or individual asks “How can I help?,” then we can get action – and we can make sure that none of the caring in the world is wasted. But complexity makes it hard to mark a path of action for everyone who cares — and that makes it hard for their caring to matter.
Cutting through complexity to find a solution runs through four predictable stages: determine a goal, find the highest-leverage approach, discover the ideal technology for that approach, and in the meantime, make the smartest application of the technology that you already have — whether it’s something sophisticated, like a drug, or something simpler, like a bednet.
The AIDS epidemic offers an example. The broad goal, of course, is to end the disease. The highest-leverage approach is prevention. The ideal technology would be a vaccine that gives lifetime immunity with a single dose. So governments, drug companies, and foundations fund vaccine research. But their work is likely to take more than a decade, so in the meantime, we have to work with what we have in hand – and the best prevention approach we have now is getting people to avoid risky behavior.
Pursuing that goal starts the four-step cycle again. This is the pattern. The crucial thing is to never stop thinking and working – and never do what we did with malaria and tuberculosis in the 20th century – which is to surrender to complexity and quit.
The final step – after seeing the problem and finding an approach – is to measure the impact of your work and share your successes and failures so that others learn from your efforts.
You have to have the statistics, of course. You have to be able to show that a program is vaccinating millions more children. You have to be able to show a decline in the number of children dying from these diseases. This is essential not just to improve the program, but also to help draw more investment from business and government.
But if you want to inspire people to participate, you have to show more than numbers; you have to convey the human impact of the work – so people can feel what saving a life means to the families affected.
I remember going to Davos some years back and sitting on a global health panel that was discussing ways to save millions of lives. Millions! Think of the thrill of saving just one person’s life – then multiply that by millions. … Yet this was the most boring panel I’ve ever been on – ever. So boring even I couldn’t bear it.
What made that experience especially striking was that I had just come from an event where we were introducing version 13 of some piece of software, and we had people jumping and shouting with excitement. I love getting people excited about software – but why can’t we generate even more excitement for saving lives?
You can’t get people excited unless you can help them see and feel the impact. And how you do that – is a complex question.
Still, I’m optimistic. Yes, inequity has been with us forever, but the new tools we have to cut through complexity have not been with us forever. They are new – they can help us make the most of our caring – and that’s why the future can be different from the past.
The defining and ongoing innovations of this age – biotechnology, the computer, the Internet – give us a chance we’ve never had before to end extreme poverty and end death from preventable disease.
Sixty years ago, George Marshall came to this commencement and announced a plan to assist the nations of post-war Europe. He said: “I think one difficulty is that the problem is one of such enormous complexity that the very mass of facts presented to the public by press and radio make it exceedingly difficult for the man in the street to reach a clear appraisement of the situation. It is virtually impossible at this distance to grasp at all the real significance of the situation.”
Thirty years after Marshall made his address, as my class graduated without me, technology was emerging that would make the world smaller, more open, more visible, less distant.
The emergence of low-cost personal computers gave rise to a powerful network that has transformed opportunities for learning and communicating.
The magical thing about this network is not just that it collapses distance and makes everyone your neighbor. It also dramatically increases the number of brilliant minds we can have working together on the same problem – and that scales up the rate of innovation to a staggering degree.
At the same time, for every person in the world who has access to this technology, five people don’t. That means many creative minds are left out of this discussion -- smart people with practical intelligence and relevant experience who don’t have the technology to hone their talents or contribute their ideas to the world.
We need as many people as possible to have access to this technology, because these advances are triggering a revolution in what human beings can do for one another. They are making it possible not just for national governments, but for universities, corporations, smaller organizations, and even individuals to see problems, see approaches, and measure the impact of their efforts to address the hunger, poverty, and desperation George Marshall spoke of 60 years ago.
Members of the Harvard Family: Here in the Yard is one of the great collections of intellectual talent in the world.
What for?
There is no question that the faculty, the alumni, the students, and the benefactors of Harvard have used their power to improve the lives of people here and around the world. But can we do more? Can Harvard dedicate its intellect to improving the lives of people who will never even hear its name?
Let me make a request of the deans and the professors – the intellectual leaders here at Harvard: As you hire new faculty, award tenure, review curriculum, and determine degree requirements, please ask yourselves:
Should our best minds be dedicated to solving our biggest problems?
Should Harvard encourage its faculty to take on the world’s worst inequities? Should Harvard students learn about the depth of global poverty … the prevalence of world hunger … the scarcity of clean water …the girls kept out of school … the children who die from diseases we can cure?
Should the world’s most privileged people learn about the lives of the world’s least privileged?
These are not rhetorical questions – you will answer with your policies.
My mother, who was filled with pride the day I was admitted here – never stopped pressing me to do more for others. A few days before my wedding, she hosted a bridal event, at which she read aloud a letter about marriage that she had written to Melinda. My mother was very ill with cancer at the time, but she saw one more opportunity to deliver her message, and at the close of the letter she said: “From those to whom much is given, much is expected.”
When you consider what those of us here in this Yard have been given – in talent, privilege, and opportunity – there is almost no limit to what the world has a right to expect from us.
In line with the promise of this age, I want to exhort each of the graduates here to take on an issue – a complex problem, a deep inequity, and become a specialist on it. If you make it the focus of your career, that would be phenomenal. But you don’t have to do that to make an impact. For a few hours every week, you can use the growing power of the Internet to get informed, find others with the same interests, see the barriers, and find ways to cut through them.
Don’t let complexity stop you. Be activists. Take on the big inequities. It will be one of the great experiences of your lives.
You graduates are coming of age in an amazing time. As you leave Harvard, you have technology that members of my class never had. You have awareness of global inequity, which we did not have. And with that awareness, you likely also have an informed conscience that will torment you if you abandon these people whose lives you could change with very little effort. You have more than we had; you must start sooner, and carry on longer.
Knowing what you know, how could you not?
And I hope you will come back here to Harvard 30 years from now and reflect on what you have done with your talent and your energy. I hope you will judge yourselves not on your professional accomplishments alone, but also on how well you have addressed the world’s deepest inequities … on how well you treated people a world away who have nothing in common with you but their humanity.
Good luck.
Harvard Commencement
(Text as prepared for delivery)
President Bok, former President Rudenstine, incoming President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, parents, and especially, the graduates:
I’ve been waiting more than 30 years to say this: “Dad, I always told you I’d come back and get my degree.”
I want to thank Harvard for this timely honor. I’ll be changing my job next year … and it will be nice to finally have a college degree on my resume.
I applaud the graduates today for taking a much more direct route to your degrees. For my part, I’m just happy that the Crimson has called me “Harvard’s most successful dropout.” I guess that makes me valedictorian of my own special class … I did the best of everyone who failed.
But I also want to be recognized as the guy who got Steve Ballmer to drop out of business school. I’m a bad influence. That’s why I was invited to speak at your graduation. If I had spoken at your orientation, fewer of you might be here today.
Harvard was just a phenomenal experience for me. Academic life was fascinating. I used to sit in on lots of classes I hadn’t even signed up for. And dorm life was terrific. I lived up at Radcliffe, in Currier House. There were always lots of people in my dorm room late at night discussing things, because everyone knew I didn’t worry about getting up in the morning. That’s how I came to be the leader of the anti-social group. We clung to each other as a way of validating our rejection of all those social people.
Radcliffe was a great place to live. There were more women up there, and most of the guys were science-math types. That combination offered me the best odds, if you know what I mean. This is where I learned the sad lesson that improving your odds doesn’t guarantee success.
One of my biggest memories of Harvard came in January 1975, when I made a call from Currier House to a company in Albuquerque that had begun making the world’s first personal computers. I offered to sell them software.
I worried that they would realize I was just a student in a dorm and hang up on me. Instead they said: “We’re not quite ready, come see us in a month,” which was a good thing, because we hadn’t written the software yet. From that moment, I worked day and night on this little extra credit project that marked the end of my college education and the beginning of a remarkable journey with Microsoft.
What I remember above all about Harvard was being in the midst of so much energy and intelligence. It could be exhilarating, intimidating, sometimes even discouraging, but always challenging. It was an amazing privilege – and though I left early, I was transformed by my years at Harvard, the friendships I made, and the ideas I worked on.
But taking a serious look back … I do have one big regret.
I left Harvard with no real awareness of the awful inequities in the world – the appalling disparities of health, and wealth, and opportunity that condemn millions of people to lives of despair.
I learned a lot here at Harvard about new ideas in economics and politics. I got great exposure to the advances being made in the sciences.
But humanity’s greatest advances are not in its discoveries – but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity. Whether through democracy, strong public education, quality health care, or broad economic opportunity – reducing inequity is the highest human achievement.
I left campus knowing little about the millions of young people cheated out of educational opportunities here in this country. And I knew nothing about the millions of people living in unspeakable poverty and disease in developing countries.
It took me decades to find out.
You graduates came to Harvard at a different time. You know more about the world’s inequities than the classes that came before. In your years here, I hope you’ve had a chance to think about how – in this age of accelerating technology – we can finally take on these inequities, and we can solve them.
Imagine, just for the sake of discussion, that you had a few hours a week and a few dollars a month to donate to a cause – and you wanted to spend that time and money where it would have the greatest impact in saving and improving lives. Where would you spend it?
For Melinda and for me, the challenge is the same: how can we do the most good for the greatest number with the resources we have.
During our discussions on this question, Melinda and I read an article about the millions of children who were dying every year in poor countries from diseases that we had long ago made harmless in this country. Measles, malaria, pneumonia, hepatitis B, yellow fever. One disease I had never even heard of, rotavirus, was killing half a million kids each year – none of them in the United States.
We were shocked. We had just assumed that if millions of children were dying and they could be saved, the world would make it a priority to discover and deliver the medicines to save them. But it did not. For under a dollar, there were interventions that could save lives that just weren’t being delivered.
If you believe that every life has equal value, it’s revolting to learn that some lives are seen as worth saving and others are not. We said to ourselves: “This can’t be true. But if it is true, it deserves to be the priority of our giving.”
So we began our work in the same way anyone here would begin it. We asked: “How could the world let these children die?”
The answer is simple, and harsh. The market did not reward saving the lives of these children, and governments did not subsidize it. So the children died because their mothers and their fathers had no power in the market and no voice in the system.
But you and I have both.
We can make market forces work better for the poor if we can develop a more creative capitalism – if we can stretch the reach of market forces so that more people can make a profit, or at least make a living, serving people who are suffering from the worst inequities. We also can press governments around the world to spend taxpayer money in ways that better reflect the values of the people who pay the taxes.
If we can find approaches that meet the needs of the poor in ways that generate profits for business and votes for politicians, we will have found a sustainable way to reduce inequity in the world. This task is open-ended. It can never be finished. But a conscious effort to answer this challenge will change the world.
I am optimistic that we can do this, but I talk to skeptics who claim there is no hope. They say: “Inequity has been with us since the beginning, and will be with us till the end – because people just … don’t … care.” I completely disagree.
I believe we have more caring than we know what to do with.
All of us here in this Yard, at one time or another, have seen human tragedies that broke our hearts, and yet we did nothing – not because we didn’t care, but because we didn’t know what to do. If we had known how to help, we would have acted.
The barrier to change is not too little caring; it is too much complexity.
To turn caring into action, we need to see a problem, see a solution, and see the impact. But complexity blocks all three steps.
Even with the advent of the Internet and 24-hour news, it is still a complex enterprise to get people to truly see the problems. When an airplane crashes, officials immediately call a press conference. They promise to investigate, determine the cause, and prevent similar crashes in the future.
But if the officials were brutally honest, they would say: “Of all the people in the world who died today from preventable causes, one half of one percent of them were on this plane. We’re determined to do everything possible to solve the problem that took the lives of the one half of one percent.”
The bigger problem is not the plane crash, but the millions of preventable deaths.
We don’t read much about these deaths. The media covers what’s new – and millions of people dying is nothing new. So it stays in the background, where it’s easier to ignore. But even when we do see it or read about it, it’s difficult to keep our eyes on the problem. It’s hard to look at suffering if the situation is so complex that we don’t know how to help. And so we look away.
If we can really see a problem, which is the first step, we come to the second step: cutting through the complexity to find a solution.
Finding solutions is essential if we want to make the most of our caring. If we have clear and proven answers anytime an organization or individual asks “How can I help?,” then we can get action – and we can make sure that none of the caring in the world is wasted. But complexity makes it hard to mark a path of action for everyone who cares — and that makes it hard for their caring to matter.
Cutting through complexity to find a solution runs through four predictable stages: determine a goal, find the highest-leverage approach, discover the ideal technology for that approach, and in the meantime, make the smartest application of the technology that you already have — whether it’s something sophisticated, like a drug, or something simpler, like a bednet.
The AIDS epidemic offers an example. The broad goal, of course, is to end the disease. The highest-leverage approach is prevention. The ideal technology would be a vaccine that gives lifetime immunity with a single dose. So governments, drug companies, and foundations fund vaccine research. But their work is likely to take more than a decade, so in the meantime, we have to work with what we have in hand – and the best prevention approach we have now is getting people to avoid risky behavior.
Pursuing that goal starts the four-step cycle again. This is the pattern. The crucial thing is to never stop thinking and working – and never do what we did with malaria and tuberculosis in the 20th century – which is to surrender to complexity and quit.
The final step – after seeing the problem and finding an approach – is to measure the impact of your work and share your successes and failures so that others learn from your efforts.
You have to have the statistics, of course. You have to be able to show that a program is vaccinating millions more children. You have to be able to show a decline in the number of children dying from these diseases. This is essential not just to improve the program, but also to help draw more investment from business and government.
But if you want to inspire people to participate, you have to show more than numbers; you have to convey the human impact of the work – so people can feel what saving a life means to the families affected.
I remember going to Davos some years back and sitting on a global health panel that was discussing ways to save millions of lives. Millions! Think of the thrill of saving just one person’s life – then multiply that by millions. … Yet this was the most boring panel I’ve ever been on – ever. So boring even I couldn’t bear it.
What made that experience especially striking was that I had just come from an event where we were introducing version 13 of some piece of software, and we had people jumping and shouting with excitement. I love getting people excited about software – but why can’t we generate even more excitement for saving lives?
You can’t get people excited unless you can help them see and feel the impact. And how you do that – is a complex question.
Still, I’m optimistic. Yes, inequity has been with us forever, but the new tools we have to cut through complexity have not been with us forever. They are new – they can help us make the most of our caring – and that’s why the future can be different from the past.
The defining and ongoing innovations of this age – biotechnology, the computer, the Internet – give us a chance we’ve never had before to end extreme poverty and end death from preventable disease.
Sixty years ago, George Marshall came to this commencement and announced a plan to assist the nations of post-war Europe. He said: “I think one difficulty is that the problem is one of such enormous complexity that the very mass of facts presented to the public by press and radio make it exceedingly difficult for the man in the street to reach a clear appraisement of the situation. It is virtually impossible at this distance to grasp at all the real significance of the situation.”
Thirty years after Marshall made his address, as my class graduated without me, technology was emerging that would make the world smaller, more open, more visible, less distant.
The emergence of low-cost personal computers gave rise to a powerful network that has transformed opportunities for learning and communicating.
The magical thing about this network is not just that it collapses distance and makes everyone your neighbor. It also dramatically increases the number of brilliant minds we can have working together on the same problem – and that scales up the rate of innovation to a staggering degree.
At the same time, for every person in the world who has access to this technology, five people don’t. That means many creative minds are left out of this discussion -- smart people with practical intelligence and relevant experience who don’t have the technology to hone their talents or contribute their ideas to the world.
We need as many people as possible to have access to this technology, because these advances are triggering a revolution in what human beings can do for one another. They are making it possible not just for national governments, but for universities, corporations, smaller organizations, and even individuals to see problems, see approaches, and measure the impact of their efforts to address the hunger, poverty, and desperation George Marshall spoke of 60 years ago.
Members of the Harvard Family: Here in the Yard is one of the great collections of intellectual talent in the world.
What for?
There is no question that the faculty, the alumni, the students, and the benefactors of Harvard have used their power to improve the lives of people here and around the world. But can we do more? Can Harvard dedicate its intellect to improving the lives of people who will never even hear its name?
Let me make a request of the deans and the professors – the intellectual leaders here at Harvard: As you hire new faculty, award tenure, review curriculum, and determine degree requirements, please ask yourselves:
Should our best minds be dedicated to solving our biggest problems?
Should Harvard encourage its faculty to take on the world’s worst inequities? Should Harvard students learn about the depth of global poverty … the prevalence of world hunger … the scarcity of clean water …the girls kept out of school … the children who die from diseases we can cure?
Should the world’s most privileged people learn about the lives of the world’s least privileged?
These are not rhetorical questions – you will answer with your policies.
My mother, who was filled with pride the day I was admitted here – never stopped pressing me to do more for others. A few days before my wedding, she hosted a bridal event, at which she read aloud a letter about marriage that she had written to Melinda. My mother was very ill with cancer at the time, but she saw one more opportunity to deliver her message, and at the close of the letter she said: “From those to whom much is given, much is expected.”
When you consider what those of us here in this Yard have been given – in talent, privilege, and opportunity – there is almost no limit to what the world has a right to expect from us.
In line with the promise of this age, I want to exhort each of the graduates here to take on an issue – a complex problem, a deep inequity, and become a specialist on it. If you make it the focus of your career, that would be phenomenal. But you don’t have to do that to make an impact. For a few hours every week, you can use the growing power of the Internet to get informed, find others with the same interests, see the barriers, and find ways to cut through them.
Don’t let complexity stop you. Be activists. Take on the big inequities. It will be one of the great experiences of your lives.
You graduates are coming of age in an amazing time. As you leave Harvard, you have technology that members of my class never had. You have awareness of global inequity, which we did not have. And with that awareness, you likely also have an informed conscience that will torment you if you abandon these people whose lives you could change with very little effort. You have more than we had; you must start sooner, and carry on longer.
Knowing what you know, how could you not?
And I hope you will come back here to Harvard 30 years from now and reflect on what you have done with your talent and your energy. I hope you will judge yourselves not on your professional accomplishments alone, but also on how well you have addressed the world’s deepest inequities … on how well you treated people a world away who have nothing in common with you but their humanity.
Good luck.
Friday, July 13, 2007
Next Gen
I love articles which can streamline the growth of technology rather than throwing terminologies which leave you feeling really dense.
So, after a whole lot of reading on LTE, here goes all that I gathered:
There is the CDMA2000 standard which uses the frequency range of 800 Mhz and 1900 Mhz. Loads of implementations but since we always US focused, it has been implemented by Sprint and Verizon. As improvements for data download speeds, the next level of technology will be EVDO Revision C (Revision A already had download speeds of 3 Mbps) which will look at download speeds of.
And then we have AT&T and T- Mobile which have implemented W-CDMA. Historically, they have faced rather low data download speeds of 384 kbps. And hence the planned migration to HSDPA and finally LTE - which is where I started from. HSDPA download speeds - 3.6 Mbps. Frequency range ~ 2100 Mhz . Since it is higher than the CDMA2000 operators, there are higher costs due to lower coverage area and hence the requirement for a larger number of base stations.
But then what is LTE - well, you can call it 4G. It is essentially upgrades to HSDPA using a different air interface, OFDMA, Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access. Download speeds - 100 Mbps; Uplink - 50 Mbps.
Commerical deployments for LTE and Revision C - 2010.
Suprisingly enough, this article talked about WiMAX as a 4G technology too with the difference that it has not evolved from other standards and hence may not have the economies of scale required for a wide spread deployment.
So, after a whole lot of reading on LTE, here goes all that I gathered:
There is the CDMA2000 standard which uses the frequency range of 800 Mhz and 1900 Mhz. Loads of implementations but since we always US focused, it has been implemented by Sprint and Verizon. As improvements for data download speeds, the next level of technology will be EVDO Revision C (Revision A already had download speeds of 3 Mbps) which will look at download speeds of.
And then we have AT&T and T- Mobile which have implemented W-CDMA. Historically, they have faced rather low data download speeds of 384 kbps. And hence the planned migration to HSDPA and finally LTE - which is where I started from. HSDPA download speeds - 3.6 Mbps. Frequency range ~ 2100 Mhz . Since it is higher than the CDMA2000 operators, there are higher costs due to lower coverage area and hence the requirement for a larger number of base stations.
But then what is LTE - well, you can call it 4G. It is essentially upgrades to HSDPA using a different air interface, OFDMA, Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access. Download speeds - 100 Mbps; Uplink - 50 Mbps.
Commerical deployments for LTE and Revision C - 2010.
Suprisingly enough, this article talked about WiMAX as a 4G technology too with the difference that it has not evolved from other standards and hence may not have the economies of scale required for a wide spread deployment.
Monday, July 09, 2007
Structure
How do I want to collect my data:
Size of the venture capital fund market in Europe:
Size of the venture capital funds focused on seed and early stage in Europe:
Size of the VC capital in FGS:
Size of VC funds focused on seed and early stage in FGS:
Size of valued firms which have gone for a merger:
Size of valued firms which have gone for an IPO:
Collect the funds in FSG which are focused on the seed and early stages
...and where are they invested.
A useful link: http://www.thecoffeeshopsofmayfair.com/2007/01/2006_early_stag.html
Size of the venture capital fund market in Europe:
Size of the venture capital funds focused on seed and early stage in Europe:
Size of the VC capital in FGS:
Size of VC funds focused on seed and early stage in FGS:
Size of valued firms which have gone for a merger:
Size of valued firms which have gone for an IPO:
Collect the funds in FSG which are focused on the seed and early stages
...and where are they invested.
A useful link: http://www.thecoffeeshopsofmayfair.com/2007/01/2006_early_stag.html
Saturday, July 07, 2007
Valuation continued
The focus here is on the valuation of seed stage and early stage venture firms. In traditional environments, the standard methods used are Discounted cash flow, comparable transaction multiples and trading multiples based on a firm factor.
And now the VC environment. Out of the ten firms invested in, 4 will loose their shirt, 2 will break even+/-, 3 will gain in the range of 2-5x and 1 will be the blockbuster 8-10x. (A report talks of VCs aiming for 10x and P/E firms aiming for 3-5x due to a lower risk profile). Due to this inherent variability in revenues, DCF cannot be the recommended approach even with the consideration of multiple scenarios. What then?
One of the approaches - The Cost Basis Valuation - is deciding the cost involved in developing the venture.
The Final Valuation approach entails determining the valuation at the end of, say, 5 years. Then determine the capital to be invested for a 10x return. You have the pre-money valuation and you determine the post money valuation and invest accordingly.
Interesting read - the original article. it even had quotes from an ivvestor putting the average IPO in the US markets at $180 million and an average M&A valuation at $120 million, 90% of the exit.
http://www.valuecruncher.com/wordpress/?cat=2
And now the VC environment. Out of the ten firms invested in, 4 will loose their shirt, 2 will break even+/-, 3 will gain in the range of 2-5x and 1 will be the blockbuster 8-10x. (A report talks of VCs aiming for 10x and P/E firms aiming for 3-5x due to a lower risk profile). Due to this inherent variability in revenues, DCF cannot be the recommended approach even with the consideration of multiple scenarios. What then?
One of the approaches - The Cost Basis Valuation - is deciding the cost involved in developing the venture.
The Final Valuation approach entails determining the valuation at the end of, say, 5 years. Then determine the capital to be invested for a 10x return. You have the pre-money valuation and you determine the post money valuation and invest accordingly.
Interesting read - the original article. it even had quotes from an ivvestor putting the average IPO in the US markets at $180 million and an average M&A valuation at $120 million, 90% of the exit.
http://www.valuecruncher.com/wordpress/?cat=2
Friday, July 06, 2007
VC Valuation
A tit-bit I picked up on VC valuation of ventures in the seed and early stage:
Some of the valuation errors from the hype years:
Multiples of monthly unique users, eyeballs or web users
DCF on a terminal value
Efficient IPO money machine (I'll explain this one when I understand it)
Valuations based on the latest market transactions - you tend to get caught up in the market frenzy
And a couple of recommended procedures:
Percentage of ownership
A very interesting point - DCF based on the terminal year of the holding period. That means exit forward multiples or compounded hurdle rates
Pre money post money ranges
Comparable company approach - Projected profitability and ratios such as firm value to sales/EBIT/EBITDA
And the final is of course scenario analysis with multiple probabilities
Some of the valuation errors from the hype years:
Multiples of monthly unique users, eyeballs or web users
DCF on a terminal value
Efficient IPO money machine (I'll explain this one when I understand it)
Valuations based on the latest market transactions - you tend to get caught up in the market frenzy
And a couple of recommended procedures:
Percentage of ownership
A very interesting point - DCF based on the terminal year of the holding period. That means exit forward multiples or compounded hurdle rates
Pre money post money ranges
Comparable company approach - Projected profitability and ratios such as firm value to sales/EBIT/EBITDA
And the final is of course scenario analysis with multiple probabilities
Services and markets
A lot of talk at the forum was centered around the security of data on mobiles. Found a company which supplies the clients to help with mobile data backup and data synchronisation. Their target segment is the OEMs and the telco service providers - their statement - it brings smart phone functionality to everyday phones.
Thursday, July 05, 2007
Bell Canada
A huge private equity telecom operator acquisition - Teachers Private Capital, Providence Equity Partners and Madison Dearbon in an all cash deal valued at $48.5 billion. Some facts:
The share price is at a 40% premium to the average share price over the first quarter of 2007
For the deal, $15.9 billion is in debt, preferred stock and minority interest
The purchase price is at 7.8 times EBITDA for the next 12 months till March
Providence has $21 billion in assets under management with investments in about 100 companies. Madison, meanwhile, has $14 billion assets under management with investments in about 200 companies. Of this, $6.5 billion was raised in their 5th fund last year.
Now, comparing this with the AT&T acquisition of Bell South: The acquisition value was $ 72.6 billion. Key difference - it was an all stock swap deal. The value - 8.7 times EBITDA.
The share price is at a 40% premium to the average share price over the first quarter of 2007
For the deal, $15.9 billion is in debt, preferred stock and minority interest
The purchase price is at 7.8 times EBITDA for the next 12 months till March
Providence has $21 billion in assets under management with investments in about 100 companies. Madison, meanwhile, has $14 billion assets under management with investments in about 200 companies. Of this, $6.5 billion was raised in their 5th fund last year.
Now, comparing this with the AT&T acquisition of Bell South: The acquisition value was $ 72.6 billion. Key difference - it was an all stock swap deal. The value - 8.7 times EBITDA.
Friday, June 29, 2007
Comparables
For a long time now, I have been wondering what the comparable index is for technology companies - well, it is the NYSE ARCA Tech 100. Its a price weighted multi industry index comprising common stocks and ADRs listed on US exchanges, whose core capability is the technology sector. Price weighted, of course, is all their prices divided by the number of shares adjusted for stock splits.
Sectors included are: Semiconductors, computer hardware and software, telecommunications, data storage and processing, electronics, media, aerospace and defense, health care equipment and biotechnology.
http://www.nyse.com/pdfs/103_NXT_Index_Information.pdf
Over the last 52 weeks, it had fluctuated from 732 (18th Jul 2006) - 960 (20th June 2007). March this year saw a lot of low end blips where the index was trading in the 830 range but since April it has been climbing.
Searching for more information on the index ratios.
Another index of importance is the NASDAQ 100.
Sectors included are: Semiconductors, computer hardware and software, telecommunications, data storage and processing, electronics, media, aerospace and defense, health care equipment and biotechnology.
http://www.nyse.com/pdfs/103_NXT_Index_Information.pdf
Over the last 52 weeks, it had fluctuated from 732 (18th Jul 2006) - 960 (20th June 2007). March this year saw a lot of low end blips where the index was trading in the 830 range but since April it has been climbing.
Searching for more information on the index ratios.
Another index of importance is the NASDAQ 100.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
New Technologies
For the typical technology geek, all this may be outdated, but for me it is opening up a whole new world.
I knew about IPTV and then I heard about TV clips on the mobile thanks to 3G. Now, we have DVB-H. And what is the difference: TV via 3G streams the data to your mobile phone whereas with DVB-H, the information is actually being broadcast to the mobile phone. Broadcast to the phone - now why didnt I think of that.
This from a Pyramid research report on the efficiency of subsidies for subscriber acquisition, when it comes to the black market for handset sales India is at 20% i.e. 20% of handset sales in India is through the blackmarket. I know, thats huge, but it was the lowest in the chart. Russia was the highest, at 90%! As for ARPU differences, in India and similar markets, the ARPU would be $9 whereas in Europe its around $38 and in the US, it ranges to almost $50.
We generally say - the telecom capex is - here's a category division of capex:
Access - DSL, WiMAX(I think), cable, fibre
Network control and routing
Transport networks
Software and applications.
Will try and gather the main technologies in each head as of now....
A redundant one-liner - two large telecom players from Latin America - Telmex, which focuses on only businesses outside of Mexico and Telefonica with a focus on business and residential - Telmex has a higher capex because they have started investing in wimax but Telefonica hasnt taken the plunge yet.
An input on WiMAX - The capex for WiMAX is not expected to be lower than GSM. And why? GSM implementations would be cheaper because of scale and lower spectrum bands(30 MHz). However the Opex for WiMAX will be lower because of its all IP architecture and higher capacity(2/2.5/3.5 GHz). Acquisition costs, of course, 3G is lower. Enlightening for me was the thinking on IPRs. It is expected that the IPR on the equipment for WiMAX will be 0% of the value. The value is typically 2-5% though its almost 15% for W-CDMA equioment. Lower the IPR, more the competition, more the players, lower the equipment costs and higher the adoption.
I knew about IPTV and then I heard about TV clips on the mobile thanks to 3G. Now, we have DVB-H. And what is the difference: TV via 3G streams the data to your mobile phone whereas with DVB-H, the information is actually being broadcast to the mobile phone. Broadcast to the phone - now why didnt I think of that.
This from a Pyramid research report on the efficiency of subsidies for subscriber acquisition, when it comes to the black market for handset sales India is at 20% i.e. 20% of handset sales in India is through the blackmarket. I know, thats huge, but it was the lowest in the chart. Russia was the highest, at 90%! As for ARPU differences, in India and similar markets, the ARPU would be $9 whereas in Europe its around $38 and in the US, it ranges to almost $50.
We generally say - the telecom capex is - here's a category division of capex:
Access - DSL, WiMAX(I think), cable, fibre
Network control and routing
Transport networks
Software and applications.
Will try and gather the main technologies in each head as of now....
A redundant one-liner - two large telecom players from Latin America - Telmex, which focuses on only businesses outside of Mexico and Telefonica with a focus on business and residential - Telmex has a higher capex because they have started investing in wimax but Telefonica hasnt taken the plunge yet.
An input on WiMAX - The capex for WiMAX is not expected to be lower than GSM. And why? GSM implementations would be cheaper because of scale and lower spectrum bands(30 MHz). However the Opex for WiMAX will be lower because of its all IP architecture and higher capacity(2/2.5/3.5 GHz). Acquisition costs, of course, 3G is lower. Enlightening for me was the thinking on IPRs. It is expected that the IPR on the equipment for WiMAX will be 0% of the value. The value is typically 2-5% though its almost 15% for W-CDMA equioment. Lower the IPR, more the competition, more the players, lower the equipment costs and higher the adoption.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Telco ratios
Collecting data: ratios from the Indian market
MTNL: P/E - 15.71
Bharti: P/E - 38.71 (interestingly when I checked the price was Rs. 823 whereas Idea was trading at 117. )
Reliance communications: P/E - 49.12 with a share price of 513.
I had no idea that BHarti was the most highly priced share.....
Indian ARPU from December 2006 - Rs. 315
These are figures from April 2007
Indian has penetration rates of less than 16% which is about 167 million. Comparatively China has a penetration rate of 35% with 400 million covered. As I've said before, one of the keys to valuation in emerging markets are the numbers of subscribers. This was more so earlier when EBITDA was largely negative. However, now, EBITDA multiples are largely being used for valuation even in India.
One of the articles I read, talked about earnings multiples being used in the future though I am not so sure about the thought process. I find EV/ EBITDA used with highest frequency. Also, the same article talked about EPS being a performance measurement index when the growth rates stabilise as does capex. The reason I disagree is because in a telecom environment, capex is not just related to growth in subscribers but also growth in technology. The large investments being made today by AT&T and Verizon are for their broadband growth and the FiOS projects etc not just a battle for coverage.
Some acquisition data:
AT&T-Bellsouth - $67 billion that is 54 million wireless and data Bellsouth subscribers
Telefonica-O2 UK - $31 billion
Aditya Birla sold 33% of Idea Cellular for $813 million
Tata Teleservices sold 9.9% to Temasek for $300 million
Also, a quote from the same article I've mentioned earlier - I would love to have this confirmed: Indian telco capex since 1995 - $13 billion. Now, in the next three years, the capex expectation is $22 billion! I wish I had some background to these numbers. I may be able to cull out something from the balance sheets of the equipment providers. Just in the month of June, a look at the Nokia-Siemens orders from India - Rs. 300 crore GSM expansion from Aircell, Rs. 500 million GSM/ GPRS/EDGE expansion from Idea Cellular. The BSNL order is DSLAMs for their Eithernet Internet network - 6 million connections but no figures on financials. This is one month - $77 million not counting BSNL.
MTNL: P/E - 15.71
Bharti: P/E - 38.71 (interestingly when I checked the price was Rs. 823 whereas Idea was trading at 117. )
Reliance communications: P/E - 49.12 with a share price of 513.
I had no idea that BHarti was the most highly priced share.....
Indian ARPU from December 2006 - Rs. 315
These are figures from April 2007
Indian has penetration rates of less than 16% which is about 167 million. Comparatively China has a penetration rate of 35% with 400 million covered. As I've said before, one of the keys to valuation in emerging markets are the numbers of subscribers. This was more so earlier when EBITDA was largely negative. However, now, EBITDA multiples are largely being used for valuation even in India.
One of the articles I read, talked about earnings multiples being used in the future though I am not so sure about the thought process. I find EV/ EBITDA used with highest frequency. Also, the same article talked about EPS being a performance measurement index when the growth rates stabilise as does capex. The reason I disagree is because in a telecom environment, capex is not just related to growth in subscribers but also growth in technology. The large investments being made today by AT&T and Verizon are for their broadband growth and the FiOS projects etc not just a battle for coverage.
Some acquisition data:
AT&T-Bellsouth - $67 billion that is 54 million wireless and data Bellsouth subscribers
Telefonica-O2 UK - $31 billion
Aditya Birla sold 33% of Idea Cellular for $813 million
Tata Teleservices sold 9.9% to Temasek for $300 million
Also, a quote from the same article I've mentioned earlier - I would love to have this confirmed: Indian telco capex since 1995 - $13 billion. Now, in the next three years, the capex expectation is $22 billion! I wish I had some background to these numbers. I may be able to cull out something from the balance sheets of the equipment providers. Just in the month of June, a look at the Nokia-Siemens orders from India - Rs. 300 crore GSM expansion from Aircell, Rs. 500 million GSM/ GPRS/EDGE expansion from Idea Cellular. The BSNL order is DSLAMs for their Eithernet Internet network - 6 million connections but no figures on financials. This is one month - $77 million not counting BSNL.
Monday, June 18, 2007
Interview Preps
Was preparing for a to-be interview and decided to write down some data from their annual report:
NASSCOM reports: IT services export industry grew by 33% till March 31st, 2006 and IT and IT enabled export services are expected to grow by 27%-30% till March 2007.
NASSCOM reports: IT services export industry grew by 33% till March 31st, 2006 and IT and IT enabled export services are expected to grow by 27%-30% till March 2007.
Thursday, May 03, 2007
Indian Telcos
For a top down approach of top line, the three most important factors to be considered would be:
- GDP growth
- Income growth
- Affordability where cheaper handsets and all the regulation factors come into play.
Some more data - for European and US telcos, ARPU is caluclated on the basis of average revenues of the last two years. However in India, because of the rapid rate of growth, the revenue of the trailing 12 months is divided by the current suscribers for the ARPU. Another way is to multiply the minutes of usage per subscriber per month with the minute rate.
An eye on some of the major cost heads:
Entry fee - A one time charge for entry forlicense to operate (Rs 25 million)
Access deficit charge - 1.5% of non-rural annual gross revenues to subsidise BSNL in the rural markets
License fee - 6% of AGR as license fee to operate
SG&A expenses
Personal expenses
And now we come to identify telcom stock for investment purposes, some of the macro issues to be considered are Management depth of vision, Coverage area, Capex (after operating expenses there should be sufficient cash flow to fund the required network expansion - and enfin, the financial metrics. Some of the key ratios for consideration:
Sales growth ------ Average revenue per user ------ Subscriber growth
EBIDTA margins or Operating margins [(Sales - Operating expenditure)/Sales)]
Interest coverage [Profit before interest and tax/Interest]
Net profit margins [Net profits/Sales]
Earnings per share
EBIDTA per share
Debt to equity
Return on equity [PAT/Equity or Net worth]
Return on capital employed [PBIT/Capital employed, which is Equity + Debt]
Free cash flow [Profit after tax + Depreciation - Dividend & Dividend Tax - Capex -Working capital changes]
Recievable days, working capital turnover and asset turnover should also be considered for a holisitic view of the company.
And finally valuation - P/E, P/CF and EV/ subscriber.
NB: A tit bit gleaned today, regarding some of the IT acquisitions seen during the boom days, the Price/ Sales ratio was typically in the range of 2.2-5.
-The way out from the high debt levels that telcos experienced in 2002 was through the issue of equity rights issues, to try and reduce the cost of debt and prevent downgrading from the fall in coverage ratios.
- GDP growth
- Income growth
- Affordability where cheaper handsets and all the regulation factors come into play.
Some more data - for European and US telcos, ARPU is caluclated on the basis of average revenues of the last two years. However in India, because of the rapid rate of growth, the revenue of the trailing 12 months is divided by the current suscribers for the ARPU. Another way is to multiply the minutes of usage per subscriber per month with the minute rate.
An eye on some of the major cost heads:
Entry fee - A one time charge for entry forlicense to operate (Rs 25 million)
Access deficit charge - 1.5% of non-rural annual gross revenues to subsidise BSNL in the rural markets
License fee - 6% of AGR as license fee to operate
SG&A expenses
Personal expenses
And now we come to identify telcom stock for investment purposes, some of the macro issues to be considered are Management depth of vision, Coverage area, Capex (after operating expenses there should be sufficient cash flow to fund the required network expansion - and enfin, the financial metrics. Some of the key ratios for consideration:
Sales growth ------ Average revenue per user ------ Subscriber growth
EBIDTA margins or Operating margins [(Sales - Operating expenditure)/Sales)]
Interest coverage [Profit before interest and tax/Interest]
Net profit margins [Net profits/Sales]
Earnings per share
EBIDTA per share
Debt to equity
Return on equity [PAT/Equity or Net worth]
Return on capital employed [PBIT/Capital employed, which is Equity + Debt]
Free cash flow [Profit after tax + Depreciation - Dividend & Dividend Tax - Capex -Working capital changes]
Recievable days, working capital turnover and asset turnover should also be considered for a holisitic view of the company.
And finally valuation - P/E, P/CF and EV/ subscriber.
NB: A tit bit gleaned today, regarding some of the IT acquisitions seen during the boom days, the Price/ Sales ratio was typically in the range of 2.2-5.
-The way out from the high debt levels that telcos experienced in 2002 was through the issue of equity rights issues, to try and reduce the cost of debt and prevent downgrading from the fall in coverage ratios.
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
It sounds like prattle
An interesting website. They threw some light on the focus areas for telecom valuation. The firm undertakes valuation exercises for telcos with special focus on:
1. Physical assets - wireline and wireless networks
2. Intangible assets - eg spectrum liceses. In fact they had undertaken a study to determine the revenues that will flow to the treasury with the auction of a particular spectrum.
3. Contracts in place and competitive strategies
4. And finally the entire business.
For the revenues generated from issue of new licenses, some of the factors considered were:
Previous revenues generated in Mhz-pop. They could use an income approach or a comparables approach. The differences in the parameters for the income approach, the least of which is the diverse WACC, lead to a preference for the comparables approach. The argument is that the comparables have already taken into account present value of future cash flows.
Technology differences
Drop in price with the issue of new licenses
Lower price if the spectrum is encumbered.
The price quoted was 1.65 dollars per MHz-pop. The revenue is then calculated as 1.65 into the total bandwidth being auctioned and the population of the coverage area (in this case the population of the US) in a base year.
1. Physical assets - wireline and wireless networks
2. Intangible assets - eg spectrum liceses. In fact they had undertaken a study to determine the revenues that will flow to the treasury with the auction of a particular spectrum.
3. Contracts in place and competitive strategies
4. And finally the entire business.
For the revenues generated from issue of new licenses, some of the factors considered were:
Previous revenues generated in Mhz-pop. They could use an income approach or a comparables approach. The differences in the parameters for the income approach, the least of which is the diverse WACC, lead to a preference for the comparables approach. The argument is that the comparables have already taken into account present value of future cash flows.
Technology differences
Drop in price with the issue of new licenses
Lower price if the spectrum is encumbered.
The price quoted was 1.65 dollars per MHz-pop. The revenue is then calculated as 1.65 into the total bandwidth being auctioned and the population of the coverage area (in this case the population of the US) in a base year.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Key parameters
Reading a report - found some important parameters for a Bharti valuation:
WACC - 11.6%
Beta - 1.2
The assumption is strong cash flow growth till '15, medium term growth rate of 5% from 15-30, and a terminal growth rate of 3%.
WACC - 11.6%
Beta - 1.2
The assumption is strong cash flow growth till '15, medium term growth rate of 5% from 15-30, and a terminal growth rate of 3%.
Friday, April 13, 2007
RIM
I'm back after a long hiatus and with a host of things to update on. Forget the Hong Kong trip and forget about the rest of the time in India. We're now in London. Job applications and studies for Level2 take up most of my time. There are new learnings every day which are forgotten in two days time. So I had better start jotting them down for an easy referral.
Like today - there has been all this talk about the Palm acquisition. Why not RIM? I did an approximate valuation exercise. Now, I know, the biggest lacuna for me is the paucity of industry data but from whatever I have, the stock looks expensive for an acquisition. Some key figures -:
The enterprise value is 24 billion USD
EV/ EBITDA ratio is 28.5
P/E (trailing/ forward) is 53.99/ 28.25
Palm, on the other hand, has an Enterprise Value/ EBITDA ratio of 9.9 (Enterprise value of 1.26 billion USD)
P/E (trailing/ forward) is 26.67/ 23.66
PEG is 2.5 while RIM is 1.5
I'm not sure which would be the best comparables for this scenario but it was the EV/ EBITDA ratio which caught my eye.
And before leaving, the Vodafone valuation had hit me with the complexity and well, have to confess, I have temporarily put it on hold. But here are some notes for when I re-start:
I dont need to reiterate that sum-of-parts is the way to go. Thats simple enough. To be noted is that - For fixed lines, I should use a WACC of 8% and terminal growth of 2%. For mobile, WACC would be 8.5% and terminal growth at 3%. These are the recommended numbers from a report by one of the bulge bracket I-firms. If I come across something different, will update it here.
Like today - there has been all this talk about the Palm acquisition. Why not RIM? I did an approximate valuation exercise. Now, I know, the biggest lacuna for me is the paucity of industry data but from whatever I have, the stock looks expensive for an acquisition. Some key figures -:
The enterprise value is 24 billion USD
EV/ EBITDA ratio is 28.5
P/E (trailing/ forward) is 53.99/ 28.25
Palm, on the other hand, has an Enterprise Value/ EBITDA ratio of 9.9 (Enterprise value of 1.26 billion USD)
P/E (trailing/ forward) is 26.67/ 23.66
PEG is 2.5 while RIM is 1.5
I'm not sure which would be the best comparables for this scenario but it was the EV/ EBITDA ratio which caught my eye.
And before leaving, the Vodafone valuation had hit me with the complexity and well, have to confess, I have temporarily put it on hold. But here are some notes for when I re-start:
I dont need to reiterate that sum-of-parts is the way to go. Thats simple enough. To be noted is that - For fixed lines, I should use a WACC of 8% and terminal growth of 2%. For mobile, WACC would be 8.5% and terminal growth at 3%. These are the recommended numbers from a report by one of the bulge bracket I-firms. If I come across something different, will update it here.
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Its cold!
Am back to the cold and I'm writing in afer quite a while. Somehow time just flies by with mum-papa. Had their celebrations for the new house yesterday. The days before have gone by in shopping for the doll and her mom:-) Did I mention I'm going to Hong Kong to meet them. Counting the minutes.....
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Viva La Gaul!
Before leaving Guwahati, a recording of 'Asterix in Corsica'. Love the names of the guests....
PetitSuix from Switzerland, Huevos Y Bacon from Spain, InstantMix from Rome (;-)). And then the others, all in a row, AntiClimax, MyKingdomForAnos, OverOptimistix, Mcanix, Dipsomaniax. Followed by the imaginary countries Jellibabix from Lugdunum, Drinklikafix from Massilia, Seniorservix from Gesocribatum, Winesanspirix the Arvernian.
Before I continue, this song gives me goose - bumps every time I hear it. Would I ever have left home if not for Tweedledum.....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_VymClIJzo. Amazing composition.
And then to get back to Asterix - the name of the Corsican - BoneyWasAWarriorWayayix. The others PotatoGnocchix, Lasagnix, SemolinaGnocchix, Raviolix, Spaghettix, Cannellonix, Tagliatellix.
And now to get back to packing.
PetitSuix from Switzerland, Huevos Y Bacon from Spain, InstantMix from Rome (;-)). And then the others, all in a row, AntiClimax, MyKingdomForAnos, OverOptimistix, Mcanix, Dipsomaniax. Followed by the imaginary countries Jellibabix from Lugdunum, Drinklikafix from Massilia, Seniorservix from Gesocribatum, Winesanspirix the Arvernian.
Before I continue, this song gives me goose - bumps every time I hear it. Would I ever have left home if not for Tweedledum.....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_VymClIJzo. Amazing composition.
And then to get back to Asterix - the name of the Corsican - BoneyWasAWarriorWayayix. The others PotatoGnocchix, Lasagnix, SemolinaGnocchix, Raviolix, Spaghettix, Cannellonix, Tagliatellix.
And now to get back to packing.
Monday, January 15, 2007
Clean - up
My mailbox can do with a clean-up and the best way to do that will be to start posting all the recipes collected over the past year. Beginning with the end, La Vierge (;-)) sent me a copy of her recipe. This was the chicken curry she had cooked for the welcome week and it was really delicious!!
Volaille au curry (serves 4):
Chicken 1.5 kgs
Onion 1 large, chopped finely
Shallot 1 chopped finely
Apple 1
Lime 1 juiced
Flour 2 tablespoons
Oil 2 tbsp
Crème fraiche 2 tbsp
Curry powder (french) 1 tbsp
Coconut milk 1 dl
Chicken stock 2 dl
Garlic 1 pressed clove
Salt & pepper to taste
Basmati rice as accompaniment
Cut chicken in 8-10 pieces
Sautee with oil, chopped onion, shallot, salt & pepper.
When golden, add curry powder, garlic, flour, mix.
Then add coconut milk & stock.
Bring to a boil, add apple pieces, lime juice, cook 20mns.
Take chicken pieces out. Cook sauce to thicken, add crème fraiche.
Add sauce to chicken pieces & serve hot w/basmati rice.
Volaille au curry (serves 4):
Chicken 1.5 kgs
Onion 1 large, chopped finely
Shallot 1 chopped finely
Apple 1
Lime 1 juiced
Flour 2 tablespoons
Oil 2 tbsp
Crème fraiche 2 tbsp
Curry powder (french) 1 tbsp
Coconut milk 1 dl
Chicken stock 2 dl
Garlic 1 pressed clove
Salt & pepper to taste
Basmati rice as accompaniment
Cut chicken in 8-10 pieces
Sautee with oil, chopped onion, shallot, salt & pepper.
When golden, add curry powder, garlic, flour, mix.
Then add coconut milk & stock.
Bring to a boil, add apple pieces, lime juice, cook 20mns.
Take chicken pieces out. Cook sauce to thicken, add crème fraiche.
Add sauce to chicken pieces & serve hot w/basmati rice.
Sunday, January 14, 2007
Modern day parables
It felt like Atlas Shrugged revisited:
OLD VERSION..... The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant's a fool and laughs & dances & plays the summer away. Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter so he dies out in the cold. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
MODERN VERSION The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant's a fool and laughs & dances & plays the summer away. Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.
NDTV, BBC, CNN show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. The World is stunned by the sharp contrast.
How can this be that this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?
Arundhati Roy stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house. Medha Patkar goes on a fast alongwith other grasshoppers demanding that grasshoppers be relocated to warmer climates during winter. Amnesty International and Kofi Annan criticizes the Indian Government for not upholding the fundamental rights of the grasshopper. The Internet is flooded with online petitions seeking support to the grasshopper (many promising Heaven and Everlasting Peace for prompt support as against the wrath of God for non-compliance). Opposition MP's stage a walkout. Left parties call for "Bharat Bandh" in West Bengal and Kerala demanding a Judicial Enquiry.
CPM in Kerala immediately passes a law preventing Ants from working hard in the heat so as to bring about equality of poverty among ants and grasshoppers. Lalu Prasad allocates one free coach to Grasshoppers on all Indian Railway Trains, aptly named as the 'Grasshopper Rath'. Finally, the Judicial Committee drafts the Prevention of Terrorism Against Grasshoppers Act [POTAGA]", with effect from the beginning of the winter. The ant is fined for failing to comply with POTAGA and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government and handed over to the grasshopper in a ceremony covered by NDTV.
Arundhati Roy calls it "a triumph of justice". Lalu calls it 'Socialistic Justice'. CPM calls it the 'revolutionary resurgence of the downtrodden' Koffi Annan invites the grasshopper to address the UN General Assembly.
Many years later... The ant has since migrated to the US and set up a multi billion dollar company in silicon valley 100s of grasshoppers die of starvation somewhere in India...
OLD VERSION..... The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant's a fool and laughs & dances & plays the summer away. Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter so he dies out in the cold. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
MODERN VERSION The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant's a fool and laughs & dances & plays the summer away. Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.
NDTV, BBC, CNN show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. The World is stunned by the sharp contrast.
How can this be that this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?
Arundhati Roy stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house. Medha Patkar goes on a fast alongwith other grasshoppers demanding that grasshoppers be relocated to warmer climates during winter. Amnesty International and Kofi Annan criticizes the Indian Government for not upholding the fundamental rights of the grasshopper. The Internet is flooded with online petitions seeking support to the grasshopper (many promising Heaven and Everlasting Peace for prompt support as against the wrath of God for non-compliance). Opposition MP's stage a walkout. Left parties call for "Bharat Bandh" in West Bengal and Kerala demanding a Judicial Enquiry.
CPM in Kerala immediately passes a law preventing Ants from working hard in the heat so as to bring about equality of poverty among ants and grasshoppers. Lalu Prasad allocates one free coach to Grasshoppers on all Indian Railway Trains, aptly named as the 'Grasshopper Rath'. Finally, the Judicial Committee drafts the Prevention of Terrorism Against Grasshoppers Act [POTAGA]", with effect from the beginning of the winter. The ant is fined for failing to comply with POTAGA and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government and handed over to the grasshopper in a ceremony covered by NDTV.
Arundhati Roy calls it "a triumph of justice". Lalu calls it 'Socialistic Justice'. CPM calls it the 'revolutionary resurgence of the downtrodden' Koffi Annan invites the grasshopper to address the UN General Assembly.
Many years later... The ant has since migrated to the US and set up a multi billion dollar company in silicon valley 100s of grasshoppers die of starvation somewhere in India...
Saturday, January 13, 2007
Uruka-Bihu
If an alien was looking at Assam from space today, he would collapse at the amount people can eat!! Our menu for the day - Wanton soup, grilled chicken, duck, fish, vegetables, pulses.....but, of course, we are not celebrating Bihu this year...whew!!!!
I've gone light on the lunch. Thought I would have only oranges. That was before ma decided that the additonal dish on the table should be ambol....and my dietary restrictions came crashing down.
Tips picked up during the day:
Momo Soup: For the soup, boil (pressure cook) water, ginger, garlic, chilli, onion, one small chicken. When done sieve and blend the chicken mixture. Heat oil. Add a small onion, sliced garlic and the chicken blend. Cook for sometime and then add the chicken stock, salt, pepper ad lemon grass. Add the momos when this mixture comes to a boil.
Now to the momos. For the filling, heat oil, add onion, ginger, garlic and then the chicken kheema. Let it cook till all the water evaporates. Simultaneously, mix maida (flour/ farine) and water. Roll the small balls into very fine sheets. Fill a spoonfull and decoratively close the top. I remember once picking up momo/ spring roll sheets from the chinese store in Paris. Hopefully it will be available in London also. Will be quite a time-saver. The soup was so creamy and delicious.
As for the grilled chicken, it was marinated in the standard chinese elements - vinegar, soya sauce, salt. Before grilling coat with a pinch of salt, red chilli powder, oil and dab the soya sauce mixture. Sooo juicy.
And now for the tenga anja. Yesterday, I realised a big mistake I commonly make. Instead of mustard seeds, I always tend to use methi seeds. Anyway, coat fish with salt and haldi. Fry and keep aside. Heat oil. Add bay leaf, mustard seeds and a vegetable. The vegetable can be selected from any of the healthy, watery vegetables. In Fonty, I always ended up using courgette. Add salt and tumeric. Cover and cook. Add tomatoes. Cover - cook. Add water. Let it boil and then add fish. In the end, squeeze a lemon before serving.
I've gone light on the lunch. Thought I would have only oranges. That was before ma decided that the additonal dish on the table should be ambol....and my dietary restrictions came crashing down.
Tips picked up during the day:
Momo Soup: For the soup, boil (pressure cook) water, ginger, garlic, chilli, onion, one small chicken. When done sieve and blend the chicken mixture. Heat oil. Add a small onion, sliced garlic and the chicken blend. Cook for sometime and then add the chicken stock, salt, pepper ad lemon grass. Add the momos when this mixture comes to a boil.
Now to the momos. For the filling, heat oil, add onion, ginger, garlic and then the chicken kheema. Let it cook till all the water evaporates. Simultaneously, mix maida (flour/ farine) and water. Roll the small balls into very fine sheets. Fill a spoonfull and decoratively close the top. I remember once picking up momo/ spring roll sheets from the chinese store in Paris. Hopefully it will be available in London also. Will be quite a time-saver. The soup was so creamy and delicious.
As for the grilled chicken, it was marinated in the standard chinese elements - vinegar, soya sauce, salt. Before grilling coat with a pinch of salt, red chilli powder, oil and dab the soya sauce mixture. Sooo juicy.
And now for the tenga anja. Yesterday, I realised a big mistake I commonly make. Instead of mustard seeds, I always tend to use methi seeds. Anyway, coat fish with salt and haldi. Fry and keep aside. Heat oil. Add bay leaf, mustard seeds and a vegetable. The vegetable can be selected from any of the healthy, watery vegetables. In Fonty, I always ended up using courgette. Add salt and tumeric. Cover and cook. Add tomatoes. Cover - cook. Add water. Let it boil and then add fish. In the end, squeeze a lemon before serving.
Friday, January 12, 2007
BOOM!!
I know, I know - calling it adventure tourism is a little, no quite, heartless on my part but it is after all the first time for me and so long as there are no casualties.....now to go into the details:
The scene: Ma and me shopping for fish and vegetables.
We had been hurrying through because Deuta was home alone and for some reason ma was having a slightly bad feeling and felt we should get home in good time. Almost over - we had just stopped for some onions when there was this loud bang. To my untutored ear, it sounded like a fire cracker which I didn't even register but the vegetable vendor and ma looked at each other and spoke simultaneously - 'Bomb!' She practically threw the money down and rushed me through. Meanwhile the vendors were all looking at each other - silent stares. Out on the street, there was pandemonium. People were all running in one direction, away from the sound. Things had fallen off carts. In a distance, Tweedledum and were running towards us with panic stricken faces. It seems the impact of the blast had shaken up the car and lit up the sky with a red flame. All around people were shouting while some geniuses like me were still debating whether it was the wheel of a truck which had burst or a cracker. We got home at full speed to find Deuta pacing at the front door.
My first adventure with the north - east.
And now on to the second. The scene - Deuta fast asleep. Ma working at the table. Tweedledum and on youtube and me, all cosy in bed reading Sherlock Holmes. Suddenly ma came running in and switched off all the lights. Panic in the house along with shushing sounds. It took me a while to notice the search light going all around as well as the gunshots being fired. What is it - army checking, breaking into a safe house or is it the SULFA? All of us silent till the sounds faded away and the cavalcade of cars drove away. Wonder what it was.
For a brief background on these experiences: http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=79196
The scene: Ma and me shopping for fish and vegetables.
We had been hurrying through because Deuta was home alone and for some reason ma was having a slightly bad feeling and felt we should get home in good time. Almost over - we had just stopped for some onions when there was this loud bang. To my untutored ear, it sounded like a fire cracker which I didn't even register but the vegetable vendor and ma looked at each other and spoke simultaneously - 'Bomb!' She practically threw the money down and rushed me through. Meanwhile the vendors were all looking at each other - silent stares. Out on the street, there was pandemonium. People were all running in one direction, away from the sound. Things had fallen off carts. In a distance, Tweedledum and were running towards us with panic stricken faces. It seems the impact of the blast had shaken up the car and lit up the sky with a red flame. All around people were shouting while some geniuses like me were still debating whether it was the wheel of a truck which had burst or a cracker. We got home at full speed to find Deuta pacing at the front door.
My first adventure with the north - east.
And now on to the second. The scene - Deuta fast asleep. Ma working at the table. Tweedledum and on youtube and me, all cosy in bed reading Sherlock Holmes. Suddenly ma came running in and switched off all the lights. Panic in the house along with shushing sounds. It took me a while to notice the search light going all around as well as the gunshots being fired. What is it - army checking, breaking into a safe house or is it the SULFA? All of us silent till the sounds faded away and the cavalcade of cars drove away. Wonder what it was.
For a brief background on these experiences: http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=79196
Monday, January 08, 2007
Whole family's together
Picked up from the airport on Saturday and since then the two bros have been creating non-stop laughter. And, of course, the eating session continues.
Ma with Ambol yesterday - A little oil, a bay leaf and 1 tsp of mustard seeds. 30 seconds and tehn add about 5 tomatoes. Let it cook and continue with tamaring and jaggery. 1 tbsp salt and 1 tbsp sugar. Let it cook. Delicious! And with plain rice - words fail!!!
And at another dinner invite last night, the chicken - Say for one kilo chicken, grind one kilo onions. Fry the onions and garlic. Add cummin seeds, salt and pepper and then the chicken. Let it cook. Again the taste was brilliant.
And at the end, what can you expect. For lunch yesterday, ma suggested I make the chicken and the dessert. With all this brilliant food, I was sweating with nervousness. And the brain went into total hibernation. Of all the assortment of poultry I have been cooking like forever, I could think of no chicken recipe. In the end had to experiment - I put everything I had into the chicken - onions, yoghurt, tomatoes, coconut milk - you name it - it went in. As for dessert - matar kheer. I am sure I could have done something just a little more conventional.....
was talking about a gay on his campus and cracking crazy jokes, and ma very seriously comments - Imaan bya kotha pati-pati, mon to bya hoi zabo...the two guys were flat on the floor:-)..has now taken it up as a challenge to prove his 'right wing';-) views at the earliest.
Ma with Ambol yesterday - A little oil, a bay leaf and 1 tsp of mustard seeds. 30 seconds and tehn add about 5 tomatoes. Let it cook and continue with tamaring and jaggery. 1 tbsp salt and 1 tbsp sugar. Let it cook. Delicious! And with plain rice - words fail!!!
And at another dinner invite last night, the chicken - Say for one kilo chicken, grind one kilo onions. Fry the onions and garlic. Add cummin seeds, salt and pepper and then the chicken. Let it cook. Again the taste was brilliant.
And at the end, what can you expect. For lunch yesterday, ma suggested I make the chicken and the dessert. With all this brilliant food, I was sweating with nervousness. And the brain went into total hibernation. Of all the assortment of poultry I have been cooking like forever, I could think of no chicken recipe. In the end had to experiment - I put everything I had into the chicken - onions, yoghurt, tomatoes, coconut milk - you name it - it went in. As for dessert - matar kheer. I am sure I could have done something just a little more conventional.....
was talking about a gay on his campus and cracking crazy jokes, and ma very seriously comments - Imaan bya kotha pati-pati, mon to bya hoi zabo...the two guys were flat on the floor:-)..has now taken it up as a challenge to prove his 'right wing';-) views at the earliest.
Friday, January 05, 2007
Just eating
A round of momos, tenga anja, chicken roll and mishti doi - all in a day. Jaggery sandesh is on morning, noon and night. The good part (the best part, of curse, is that I'm getting all of it to eat) is that I am finally seeing my weight on my own weighing machine, which is certainly more friendly than others of its ilk - you know you're being cheated but then....the human mind searches for small pleasures.
I plan on sitting with ma to get the local recipes and then record them for posterity. As a starter, a dish from one of the lunches, which I cooked with ma's instructions:
1. About six pieces of fish marinated in salt and tumeric for about 15-20 minutes. Heat mustard oil and fry the pieces till golden brown.
2. Simultaneously, blend about 10 leaves of spinach, 20 gms of coriander, 4-5 flakes of garlic, a small piece of ginger and 2-3 green chillis with about three -fourth glass of water.
3. In 1 tbsp of steaming oil, add 1 tsp of mustard powder, half an onion and some peas/ cauliflower. Fry a minute and add the spinach paste.
4. Allow it to come to a boil and then add the fish pieces. Thereafter, another full-fledged boil and apres ca simmer till gravy gets thick.
It took about half an hour for the gravy to get thick - enough time to finish the sarvangasana cycle, the paschimittanasana cycle and a couple of assorted asanas totalling 3-4 minutes.
An afterthought: Deuta on the intelligence of different races - 'A jew is just a gujju without the goo.'
I plan on sitting with ma to get the local recipes and then record them for posterity. As a starter, a dish from one of the lunches, which I cooked with ma's instructions:
1. About six pieces of fish marinated in salt and tumeric for about 15-20 minutes. Heat mustard oil and fry the pieces till golden brown.
2. Simultaneously, blend about 10 leaves of spinach, 20 gms of coriander, 4-5 flakes of garlic, a small piece of ginger and 2-3 green chillis with about three -fourth glass of water.
3. In 1 tbsp of steaming oil, add 1 tsp of mustard powder, half an onion and some peas/ cauliflower. Fry a minute and add the spinach paste.
4. Allow it to come to a boil and then add the fish pieces. Thereafter, another full-fledged boil and apres ca simmer till gravy gets thick.
It took about half an hour for the gravy to get thick - enough time to finish the sarvangasana cycle, the paschimittanasana cycle and a couple of assorted asanas totalling 3-4 minutes.
An afterthought: Deuta on the intelligence of different races - 'A jew is just a gujju without the goo.'
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
Guwahati
After a day of fog, cancelled flights, multiple telephone calls and bitten finger nails, we are finally in Guwahati. Ma-deuta looking the same, the house the same but a photo of Koka on the table. A strange feeling. It seems Nanaji asked Tweedledum what the plans for Guwahati were and he was a little stumped. This is the first time we dont directly say we'll be going to Jorhat for a couple of days - no more.....Ma said - 'I'm happy - I did all and I couldnt have done anymore'. What a satisfying feeling.
I hope the next two weeks go by smoothly. Feeling more mature within. Help me not to complicate my life sans reason.
I hope the next two weeks go by smoothly. Feeling more mature within. Help me not to complicate my life sans reason.
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