Business

Sri Lanka is a small country with barely 20 million people. Its per capita GDP is in excess of $11,000 (on a PPP basis) which is higher than India’s per capita GDP of $6,600. It thrives on tourism, tea, textiles, gems and jewellery, spices, sea-food, shipping and IT services. It has a GDP pushing $250…

Raving Dave: the software industry’s eternal teenager Around 1997, PeopleSoft was the hottest Human Resources Management System (HRMS) on the planet. SAP HR had not yet established itself in the global market. Many of our clients were implementing SAP as an enterprise solution but buying PeopleSoft for their HR application. Apart from its HRMS, PeopleSoft….

In 1998 the public accounting world was shaken by the news of a merger of two global firms Price Waterhouse and Coopers & Lybrand. The firms were of similar size. Price Waterhouse had more blue chip clients and a larger global consulting practice but their global footprints were similar. Whenever there is a merger between…

It was January 1997. I was flying from Washington D.C. to London. The person sitting next to me was Dewang Mehta, Executive Director of Nasscom. Dewang informed me that the founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates was coming to India in a couple of months. Nasscom was planning a big event that I definitely should not…

“The rain is falling … Now I am staring … Deep in my heart I would like to find a place for love and all this time, all the time we've lost Just to follow a dream” Bob Marley At the time it made a decision to diversify into Information Technology, the firm was a…

Creating shareholder value is a good thing This morning I would like to talk about the merits of creating shareholder value in a market-based economy. I will take two examples: the Ambanis and the Tatas. In Reliance Industries (RIL)— Shareholding: Promoter & Promoter Group (Ambani family + trusts + holding companies): ~50.4% Public shareholders (institutions,…