Never say Never!

"Never say Never" was a lesson that I learnt at Cisco when I was working in a product team. This was in June 2001 - which almost marks the beginning of the tough time for the industry

Me and my team would interact with a world-class sales organization which was trained to maximize the sales number in that tough environment. The sales guys did not like a negative answer especially for requirements that their customers felt as "must have" and if the competition could do

I realized that the only way to sell your product was to make sure that you 'never said never' for any requirement within your "domain". The "domain" would be defined by your product positioning. The sales people loved it

And when there are hundreds of customers with varying requirements, the policy of "never say never" gets out of hand easily. And it did, for us too!! However amount of time we would work, it would never be enough!

When I look back now, we were being naive. But it seems so exciting though! Probably it gave us a purpose!

Meeting with Old Friends!!

Read from a friend after 15 years..

It was early March 2006 morning when I checked my gmail account after multiple weeks - don't generally use the gmail account. And saw an email from Shabbir Ali. The name was so familiar that my heart was pounding

The email read something like: am I the same person that he knew of from "Indian Community School" in Tripoli

Oh yes, I am... I last saw you in June 1992 when I left for India. I still remember you - a nice and caring person, soft spoken

Coming back to the present, checked the date on the email. 10 odd days that the mail had been in my mailbox. Great not too old, responded to it, dont want to miss the chance!

..and the Gang!

And after a couple of mail exhanges, I realized Shabbir had been hunting down the school friends - there had already been 30+ people he had been in touch. And he is maintaining a group and an album on yahoo!

It was all exciting to meet these friends back again after 15 years - its so hard to describe in words. Walked on the memory lanes watching each of those photographs in the album - not just once but multiple times. Had been fun - miss those times!

Journey from Saving to Spending: Missing half the equation

History taught us to Save!

Traditionally India has been "save the money" economy. It was the call of that time:

• Generation at that time was evolving to become "well-to-do" middle-class
• Govt under Indira Gandhi followed the socialist model - banks became nationalized and so did many other industries
• Govt needed money - to build the country - and created policies to ensure people save money

And as history has shown us socialism "never" works in practical - after all power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely. And when India adopted Global Free Trade in early 1990s, it was the "paradigm" shift for India

Principles from "capital economy"

Spending is the norm now with government policies ensuring this.. spending rather than saving has tax benefits, loans and credit-card spending are doubling every 6 months, market forces are working at its best with competition at its peak and prices at its bottom. The money is churning into the market

Question to ponder upon

And my friend asked: Now that people have stopped saving in government banks, how does the government make money? Sure government needs money for building the infrastructure never required anytime before or meeting the energy demand or for the next generation of green revolution

The easy answer, I thought, was more sales lead to more taxes


Missing half the Equation

The other half of the answer that I initially missed was investing. Jobs that government have to do - now are being done by private sector companies. This leads to an increased demand for the user money, more return on investment by the private companies, more interest for people to invest and hence more activity in the stock market. Well, this also eases off the government to do anything (except regulating)

And also, then, seems to complete the shift now: Saving --> Spending and Investing

Further Thoughts

Another friend of mine made a comment: in those old days, if the price for gold would go up, the real-estate, the stock market, the market spending all would come down.. and vice-versa
And NOW is the first time that all these different markets are growing at the same time. People are spending and investing