Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Innovation Driven Entrepreneurship

Yesterday evening, I have having a chat with a good friend of mine about what our big IT companies are doing.

My friend said that the big IT companies are failure because they have not done enough. They have not entered into aggressively into the product development and hence are valued less. There are much smaller companies in other countries with much higher valuation.

There are things that I always think of and so after listening him, I proposed a different point of view.
I believe that the problem is not this 'big' IT companies but actually we are.

India has lot of innovation. The innovations are every where whether you are in the villages or cities. There are many smart and educated people.

Today, I saw an inspiring article from another friend Dr. Abhay Jere here about Innovation Driven Entrepreneurship. And I think it is very timely.

India as a country has not more than 20-30 years to excel. In these years, if we are not in the forefront of the economic revolution then we will not be a very successful and happy country.

In India, I think our problem is less about innovation and more about Entrepreneurship. Our innovations should be taught about basic concepts of entrepreneurship much before lot of time is spent on the refinement of innovation.

In the article, Abhay Jere ji talks about our human capital as main asset of Bharat. And these assets are a great source of innovation. I think these assets are also great source of economic activity where these innovations can be utilized. Innovation creates great amount of value. But this value is not captured in most cases or very little of the value is captured by innovator. Mostly big enterprises license these innovations are very little cost and capture most of the value.

If innovator is also an entrepreneur and can capture majority of the value created, we could certainly help motivating other innovators. This will also ensure innovator will think end to end rather than 'just' innovation part.

If www.i4c.in could actually develop framework and help these people to get venture and create enterprises within the country, then very soon, we will reach our economic target of the country. As the objective on the website says that focus is on the lower end of the pyramid, I believe then the investment also will be of lower scale. We should come up with Micro Venture Capital Strategy similar to micro lending.

Dr Abhay Jere is has been consistently working on this front and I believe these things will be part of the strategy in future.

Thursday, March 13, 2014

Punjab National Bank Customer Service

My experience with Banks are not always best but recently with PNB was at worst.

Here is what happened:

I went to the bank to deposit 7K INR in cash.
I took token (for cash deposit below 25K) and waited for my number.
Once my number was called, I went to the counter. The counter person refused to take my money for deposit and said that bank does not take any cash deposit below 30K and I should go to a cash deposit machine outside of the branch and deposit there.

There was no crowd and not a rush period. So, I enquired with him that they should have informed to me about this before hand for which they told me that they had put a notice (in small fonts) somewhere at entrance and they will not entertain my request.

I went to branch manager who also refused to budge to my request. He said he is unable to take cash deposit at counter as if they take any cash deposit then the top management asks question from Center. Well, after much argument he convinced me to go to the cash deposit money.

I then went to the machine which had looong queue (while counters were empty now) with no one able to deposit.

Apparently the machine was not working. We went to the branch manager (who now disappeared) and all the employees refused to take cash deposit. One employee recommended that we come next day to deposit.

While most of the transfers I do it online using NEFT or RTGS, there are times when we need to do urgent cash deposit. Not allowing customers to deposit money is a big loss. While private banks are sending people at home to pick up cash and deliver services at door steps, nationalised banks are not ready to take cash deposit. I hope all this changes soon.

Youtube Video of arguments.





Technology cannot be forced on people. Management of PNB should look into their service.

Did you face anything similar at PNB or at other banks?