Tuesday, November 16, 2010

We aren't still ready?PE investors? Are u listening?

Taken from today's ET.

WIDE ANGLE
Hunger for new ideas, impatience is still missing
By ANIL GUPTA PROFESSOR, IIM AHMEDABAD

A GREAT deal is said about the strengthening of innovation ecosystem in the country but somehow I still find the hunger for new ideas, the impatience with inertia and a desire to make an imperfect beginning missing. I find really innovative pioneers still suffering neglect and sometimes even contempt. But then the situation is not completely gloomy, some signs of hope are visible. But the alarm bells first.
Having been involved with innovators in informal and formal sector, primarily individuals but also companies, I have realised that great damage is sometimes done by paradoxically lowering the bar, reducing the expectations and being too critical at the same time to promising new ideas. If you wish to have a meeting with a colleague and discuss the issues across the table using a laptop, what options do you have, if you don’t have a projector. Sitting on same side of the screen and looking sideways, bending your neck and later getting it (neck, not the screen!) massaged for all the pain.
1)But Dr Janardan Reddy, a cardiac surgeon who had done more than ten thousand surgeries and has invented a double-sided screen displayed at several innovation meetings including that of Computers Society of India along with Mr Narayanan, a bio-engineer in Chennai, would not get a small support of Rs 45 lakh or a crore, not withstanding the self-proclaimed tribe of angel investors or public programmes meant to serve such individual professional innovators. ( There is no 45 lacs or 1 cr for this one?, PITY, Rakesh Jhunjhunwala , are you reading this? )

2)Abhijit, a former army officer, analysed thousands of pages of digital text in Indian languages and calculated statistical probability of which letter is likely to come after which other letter while typing. He devised a wonderful Indian language light software which does not need a dictionary to ease the typing on mobile is still awaiting funding to scale up his dream.
What is his aspiration? That all mobiles operators and manufactures must enable typing in Indian languages obligatory in various handsets. One would expect that the community of scholars, industrialists and policymakers would jump at such an idea, take it up for rigorous testing and mobilise support for him right away. But no, when I posted it on a list having who’s who of the IT industry involved with this subject, not one colleague responded even with a sceptic remark. What does such silence imply?

3)Another young innovator, Hemanth from Bangalore has developed a software which goes a few steps beyond YouTube and can search in videos, by converting speech or slides into OCRtext and then searching in those words. Doordarshan, IGNOU and many other private and public agencies should jump at it. Sristi will be using it to analyse the videos of village walk, shodh yatras covering more than 4,000 km of distance over last decade and more as a part of Honey Bee network engagement with grassroots creativity. But he is still struggling.

Why don’t we develop a system which responds with alacrity, empathy and genuine desire to produce global and national signatures? Tell me, I must be naive, is not it? Why are weeding out the really creative voices?

My Comments:
My view again come to the fore that we do not supprot innovation.Legpulling is our ideaology.....


9 comments:

  1. Dear Rajeev Bhai, Thanks for sharing some very good articles today out of your reading. I liked the JLR turnaround article the most.
    Also Thanks for recommending CAT technology close to 3 years back. Its showing the genius of your insight.
    Also thanks for your recco on Sujana Towers. Rajeev Bhai there have been some stock split anouncement for Sujana towers. Have burnt my fingers very badly in few of the earlier stocksplits like paramount,Rajesh Exp (It made recovery though). Needed your views on this.

    Regards,
    SM

    ReplyDelete
  2. saurabh,
    yes Cat Techno was recomended by me at MMB below 10 and it has tripled.
    People and experts are not bullish on it because they feel that management is dubious but I still feel that Cat Tech can go uo more further.
    They are also in "Cloud Computing" which is a new buzz word in int market where recently Intel has taken stake in a cloud Computing Co.
    Keep a watch on Ramco System.....this stock can be a huge multibagger in coming years as it is also in Cloud Computing space......

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi Rajeev,

    Will like and request you to write some details on Ramco systems and make it a different thread, i think its promoters are the same of madras cements which indeed is respected group. your detail write up is just amazing, so hence its just a request.

    Warm Rgds,
    Manish.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hello Rajeevji, market crashed yesterday!!!! :-) , but i am always optimistic and positive thinker like you, I took it as a buying opportunity.... :-), hope it falls a bit more so that we may get some of your recommended stocks atleast at a bit lowered amount... hope so.

    warm regards
    Reshma

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hi Reshma,
    Ups and Down are part of market.That will keep happening.
    Crashing of market always gives us chance to buy at lower level.
    Don't forget to buy my 3 old picks which I gave again recently......vishnu,ennore and srei....
    I saw ur last post in spam folder and accidently I delted it as it was in spam folder...I am sorry for that....there was no offence written for me but by habit I deleted it...

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  6. Hello Rajeevji, ahhhhhhhh..... thats why I was wondering why my message didn't appear ha ha ha...no worries but just wanted to let the other friends on the blog know i just pasted up the outcome of the board meeting of Arihant super structure for all of us to read and take some info...no worries rajeevji I know our other blog friends would have read it long before , they are smarter than me ha ha ha... :-) , ok NOW, i would need some of your insight, my heart stopped beating when I saw ORISSA MINERALS DEVELOPMENT CO a 10/- rupees FV share trading at Rs. 80200/-, how is this possible, I still cant believe and understand.... this is insane... in the mmb board one of the guy is comparing TCI Finance with Orissa minerals, if you get some time would you be able to provide some of your insight and understanding on this, also your thoughts on TCI finance as to why any one would say that TCI may also trade close to 70-80 thousand rupees. If you don't get time, its ok or if anyone on the blog would like to comment and share their understanding that would be great....

    warm regards
    Reshma

    ReplyDelete
  7. Reshma,
    The main reason behind Orissa Min is at 80k is because it has a very very TINY eq of 60 lacs , means only 6 lacs shares.Out of which over 50% is held by promo and 1.20 lacs od held by LIC etc.
    The earnings are also great.
    When the Eq is small there is low floating stock as well and easy to corner those floating stock and it keeps on moving up as the BV is also big and earning is also big so there is a chance that lateron Co will declare a very liberal BONUS shares, maybe 10:1, means 10 FREE shares for every 1 held and hence the RUSH to BUY this stock.
    Because even if one have 10 shares and 10:1 Bonus is declared then one will have 100 shares after BONUS.
    If you write "How to pick Multibaggers " in search tab on my blog you will find my old writeup where I had written that small Eq is very important for finding multibaggers.
    Read it.
    I don't think TCI Fin can become a multibagger like Orissa Min.
    Have a look at Dalal Street Investment.It's cmp is 24k and going up on only 1 share Vol.The reason is there is no shares available and operators have field day in such stocks.
    The price of Dalal Street never went down even in 2008.Check the price in 2008 as well.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Hi rajeevji.. i am blogging here for the 1st time. Can you share your views on share called Net worth

    ReplyDelete