State of business air travel: pre Kingfisher

Jet Airways (9W) ruled the roost. Period. Shahara with its blatantly bad service and lack of punctuality was hardly a competition. State run Indian Airlines (IC) was really the second best. Almost all business travellers would travel on Jet Airways as first preference. The few I knew who preferred Indian Airlines prefeered it for its better food. having travelled on IC as my second preference, I would have to agree. IC scored over 9W in both taste and the variety of food. One aspect that many liked was serving of curd in all meals.

So 9W was effectively the de facto standard to which everything would be benchmarked. An airline that many would refer to as the best domestic airlines in the world! And these were people who had trevelled the world over!!

Airlines Comparison Series

I fly both Jet and Kingfisher quite regularly and also have heard a lot from other frequent travellers. A conversation today at Chennai lounge reminded me that even many frequent travellers (he has a platinum on Jet), do not have a good understanding of the pros and cons of the two airlines. So here is my lame attempt in the genre of serial posts. Here is how it looks right now:

1: State of business air travel: pre Kingfisher
2: Kingfisher: A blast of fresh air
3. Kingfisher: The Rampup
4. Jet: The response
5. Jet vs Kingfisher: Does Jet need to fear Kingfisher?

Barcamp Pune

Continuing with my Barcamp pilgrimages, I attended the BarCamp Pune this weekend. I came in weary from extensive travel over the past 2 weeks and was rejuvenated with the infectious energy at the camp. We had over 90 people attending three parallel sessions. There were also many enthu volunteers from Symbiosis managing the show and taking/attending sessions at the same time! As usual, many interesting people and businesses.

The high point was meeting Anjali and Santosh from Bookeazy. Both have returned from US to pursue entrepreneural dreams. Very clearly, they didn’t have the best presentation. In fact, I came down on them very heavily with several questions. But in the end, I came away deeply impressed with the tenacity and enthusiasm of both of them. The discussion was one of the most engaging that I’ve had with any founders. Not sure of the answers but very sure that they’ll get them right. The best was to see Anjali sit down immediately to look at the responses to the questionnaire they had circulated. certainly the team to watch out for. I’m eagerly looking forward to their Jan release.

Barcamp Delhi 2

I’m at the second BarCamp Delhi. As usual, gyan sessions are boring. Deep tech/product demos are interesting. Discussions start. I guess it has simply to do with the fact that insights/new thoughts make one think and thats where the connection is made.

Importance of mental models in Innovation

My own discussion at Barcamp was centered around Innovation in large IT services firms such as TCS. A bulk of the audience had exposure to IT Services but almost no one believed that there was any innovation in the large IT Services firms.

It was a free flowing discussion where I wanted to hear as much from the audience as to leave them with something worthwhile. We spent a lot of time talking about how mental models inhibit or foster innovation.

We asked ourselves questions like what exactly is IT Services? Are the lines as dictated by conventional wisdom really hard lines on the ground or mere simplifying mental assumptions that need to be questioned from time to time? Does innovation start by challenging conventional wisdom?

I firmly believe that one has to continually probe at the received wisdom of the day to really see what new can be done. At the same time, one has to respect the received wisdom because its established for a good reason. Let’s take an example: Google is an example of business service enabled by strong IT. Is there something to be learnt for IT Services companies? At the first blush no, because the ad-driven revenue model is far out from current business. Not core competence as some would say. But does the basic concept of providing service to one party using strong IT and collecting money from a third depending upon the quality of service extendable to IT Services? At TCS, the answer has been yes!

Case in point: MCA21 project of government of India where TCS is directly responible for provision of service to customers and collects money from the government. The money collected depends upon the quality of service just as the ad revenue depends upon click through in Google’s model. And this is not the first time this was done. A precusrsor to this with a slightly different model was APonline which provides citizen services on behalf of Govt of AP. APOnline is 80% owned by TCS.

Bottomline: Conventional wisdom challenged but in a more realistic way which is closer to the core business. No hard and fast rules but the best way is to try and learn.

Who comes to Unconferences?

Sandeep Singhal asked an interesting question at the begining of his talk: How many of you want to be entrepreneurs and how many of you are already one? A large number of hands went up on the first and very few on the second. Clearly unconferences attract aspirants. This is evidenced also by naivette that one sees in the questions asked etc.

The good news is that a lot of the aspiring entrepreneurs at least at Barcamp Bangalore were working at an idea or had a ready concept or were looking to launch. Good deal flow for VCs such as Sandeep.

Bangalore Barcamp 2 – Large Turnout

Bangalore Barcamp was over this weekend and we had great fun. Interest levels are best indicated by numbers: 382 registered, just over 200 attended day 1 and almost 100 on day 2. When you end at 6.30 PM on a Sunday with many people still hanging around and some speakers not getting a session, you know it was a great hit.

We all started at 7.30 AM so that we have everything in place by 8.30 when the registration was to begin. The first registrant appeared at 7.40 AM and we were still waiting for keys to unlock the conference goodies. By 8.30 AM we had 25 people in from the registered list and 4 in a the waiting list. All flood gates opened by 9.00 AM. But by 9.30 we were down to a trickle and still away from the 200 mark. Next I checked was at lunch and we had around 200 in.

Still a 50% dropout rate makes me think about the fate of the upcoming barcamps. As someone pointed out, this was bangalore after all!

The team behind the efforts including yours truely: