Ecommerce

Ecommerce fight :Are the online players doing it within the premise of law (not doing dumping) :

1. because you can expect the price would be lower by 20-30% the offline chains as operating cost and inventory cost and employee cost is lower but in majority of cases like in the recently concluded flipkart billion day sale prices were slashed by more than 70% and we must all agree that it was nothing more than predatory pricing.  
2. Ola provides a guaranteed minimum of Rs2,000 a day to the driver. So he doesn’t mind waiting around in air-conditioned comfort if passengers don’t turn up or give him the slip. Ola can afford it, since it has $65-million in funding. They are able to do this because:-
1. They get cheap funding from VC ,Singapore sovereign fund and VC
2. They don’t have to worry about profitability for now unlike retail listed companies like shoppers stop, pantaloons they are only worried about acquiring customers

But can this work as a business model? 

Meanwhile, we are creating monster consumers with such a huge sense of entitlement that they expect impossible prices and extraordinary standards even from the neighbourhood grocer, who is offering you 24x7 home-delivery for trivial purchases while fighting for survival. 

 “Customers are the king here and you are just the severs,” he says. This frightening sense of entitlement extends even to the free help that people receive from NGOs; and that does worry us. 

Tax issues

After comparing prices with other sites, Amazon recommends the amount of discounts to its sellers on products, but doesn’t force them to adopt these suggested prices. Sellers, however, end up keeping these suggested prices because Amazon finances the discounts. This is how it works: at the end of a certain period, sellers send a debit note to Amazon titled “promotional funding”. This note contains the amount of discount that the seller gave on apparel, electronics, toys and other products sold on the site. Amazon then pays the seller by cheque and in some cases, also gives additional money as the seller’s margin. This debit note is over and above what Amazon collects from the customer. The debit note also includes service tax that the seller collects from Amazon on the amount of the discounts. The seller then pays the service tax to the central government. In effect, the amount of discounts are currently being treated under central service tax laws rather than state tax laws. For instance, if a product priced Rs.100 is sold for Rs.70 by a seller on Amazon, the online retailer will collect Rs.70 from the customer, keep a cut for itself, and give the remaining proceeds to the seller. Then, Amazon will also give the seller an additional amount to account for the discount offered by the seller. This amount could be Rs.30 or lower. This method potentially poses a problem for state tax authorities. Tax is typically charged on the product when there’s a transfer of ownership. In the case of e-commerce, sales tax is collected on the cost of the product and then on the price at which it is sold to the final customer. If a product is sold on a site below the cost price—as it happens in some cases—then the tax collected from the customer is much lower than what was paid originally. In this case, the seller would potentially be eligible to get a tax refund from the concerned state tax department

Airline industry and INDIGO

Industry in general


Few inventions have changed how people live and experience the world as much as the invention of the airplane.
Airlines provide a vital service, but factors including the bloated cost structure, vulnerability to exogenous events and a reputation for poor service combine to present a huge impediment to profitability. 


http://www.investopedia.com/features/industryhandbook/airline.asp
http://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0510/4-reasons-why-airlines-are-always-struggling.aspx


• Fuel Cost -  fuel is an airline's second largest expense. Fuel makes up a significant portion of an airline's total costs, although efficiency among different carriers can vary widely. Short haul airlines typically get lower fuel efficiency because take-offs and landings consume high amounts of jet fuel.
• Labor - According to the ATA, labor is the an airline's No.1 cost; airlines must pay pilots, flight attendants, baggage handlers, dispatchers, customer service and others.


• business travelers are important to airlines because they are more likely to travel several times throughout the year and they tend to purchase the upgraded services that have higher margins for the airline. On the other hand, leisure travelers are less likely to purchase these premium services and are typically very price sensitive. In times of economic uncertainty or sharp decline in consumer confidence, you can expect the number of leisure travelers to decline.
Analyze Fuel Hedging
Some airlines try to pass higher fuel costs on to their customers in the form of a fuel surcharge.
For example, Southwest Airlines hedged as much as 85% of its annual fuel usage over the past six years. The move effectively locked in consumption at $26 per barrel of oil,


http://www.investopedia.com/articles/stocks/07/airline_stocks.asp


Competition between Airbus and Boeing


Pasted from <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competition_between_Airbus_and_Boeing>




Top airline expences:
1. fuel
2. Labor
3. Maintenance















Southwest


major U.S. airline has declared bankruptcy in the past 10 years, Southwest Airlines has remained solvent and has consecutively generated a profit for the past 41 years.






Southwest Airlines, being a Low Cost Carrier (LCC), is famous for its uniquely competitive low fares, which are often some 30% lower than most of its major rivals. They have achieved this low cost leadership position in their industry by emphasizing on:




• Faster than average gate turnarounds to yield higher utilization rates.
• Putting a premium on customer service :  There's no first class, nor is there assigned seating. One class of seating. No meals or movies on flight.
• Having one type of aircraft :Southwest's fleet is comprised of one type of aircraft: the Boeing 737.“We only need to train our mechanics on one type of airplane. We only need extra parts inventory for that one type of airplane. If we have to swap a plane out at the last minute for maintenance, the fleet is totally interchangeable,"


• Using a point-to-point routing system: Another cost-cutting tactic? Forgoing the popular hub-and-spoke model, which can lead to delays in the event of inclement weather or scheduling conflicts. Instead, Southwest uses a point-to-point routing system; with this strategy, passengers deplane the flight and, chances are, the aircraft will turn around and fly back to its starting airport. Applying its Point-to-Point transit system, its admirable how Southwest Airlines has avoided the congested airports, thus not needing the dozens of gates or thousands of employees to handle the banks of the flights that come in and then disperse, leading to reducing a major fraction of the operational costs. Point-to-point service allows for direct nonstop routing by minimizing connections, delays and total trip time. As a result, approximately 71% of Southwest Airlines’ customers flew nonstop in FY2011. This service also enables the company to provide its markets with frequent, conveniently timed flights and low fares.




• High employee productivity : Its hiring process which lays stress on applicants possessing teamwork skills and optimistic outlook has helped it shape a dynamic and motivated workforce which not only helps in smooth functioning of an informal horizontal organization but also promotes accountability among the employees not just as individual but as a team.
And while pilots in most other airlines pilots are unionized, there are no such union affiliations in the Southwest Airlines which therefore does not restrict the pilot’s flying hours for a particular period
No formal hierarchy is enforced. It’s not uncommon to see the pilots assisting the flight stewards in helping them check the passengers in the plane or cleaning the plane. This helps in achieving the swiftest turn around of the aircraft.
With the innovative profit-sharing plan, they have wittily made each and every employee his/her own performance appraiser, ensuring that no employee falters behind the line.




• A very successful fuel hedging program (long-term contract with oil companies to buy fuel equivalent to $51 per barrel through 2009 that has reduced a major fraction of its operating expense).


• Serves relatively less-congested airports to achieve high asset utilization and reliable on-time performance (however later it had spread its operations to major airports as well).
• Airlines Employee profit sharing plan


•  high customer satisfaction:
- It is the only carrier that does not charges any nominal amount for changing the date of the ticket.
They have respected the basic requirement of any passenger i.e. – to reach on time, by maintaining a decent record of on schedule flights.
 Its method of offering differentiated products like Rapid Rewards frequent flyer program have made it stand apart in the LCC sector.
This is one of the reasons why, even in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks, when the entire aviation industry was reeling under the disastrous consequences of running empty flights, Southwest Airlines not only was successful in maintaining fully seated flights but also earned an ROIC of 5.8%.



















Why model not replicated :
1. Cost leadership : Single plane
2. Differential leadership: Employee satisfaction : hiring procedure and hierarchy in jobs cannot change
3. Fuel hedging plans


Pasted from <http://teamsparksouthwest.blogspot.in/2012/04/southwests-competitive-advantage.html>


Next read:"https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140603192246-220737949-organizational-research-southwest-airlines




Michael O'Leary from Ryanair has copied the model pretty well.




Gary C. Kelly is the chief executive officer and chairman of Southwest Airlines


Since Southwest typically flies shorter routes and schedules more daily flights, pilots can fly one hour longer each day than at other airlines, he says. This efficiency becomes a crucial component to the airline’s edge.
“They disproved the notion that customers preferred service to low prices.


Culture : There’s also the whole Southwest road show that is a feature of nearly every trip: Some flight attendants joke with passengers, others play games and sing, or, in the case of one flight attendant made famous in a YouTube clip, break into rap songs.
• It made its “Bags Fly Free” policy a centerpiece of its advertising and marketing campaign.


Merger :
Advantages :
• With AirTran, Southwest will inherit a fleet of 86 Boeing 717s that it will have to integrate into its operations. Mr. Kelly says those planes will provide more flexibility, allowing Southwest to serve lower-traffic cities that would be uneconomical to serve with the larger 737.
Disadvantage :
• Southwest will also have to absorb AirTran’s 8,000 employees into its highly unionized work force of 35,000. That aspect has prompted considerable worries among Southwest employees, who fear that the merger will somehow dilute the company’s specific culture. Pilots often help clean up a cabin to speed up operations. Flight attendants have been known to lend a hand on their day off.
• Its homegrown reservation system needs major help to handle code-sharing of flights with AirTran plus AirTran’s international flights. So while Southwest is busing replacing AirTran, it also is replacing much of Southwest, in terms of reservation and passenger handling systems.
Those computer systems are the most difficult part of any airline merger, executives say. For now, Southwest is running two computer systems on different screens for airport agents






Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary


Gone to extremes like : One toilet per aircraft; Charging £1 for toilets, Standing room only; Charging for overweight passengers;  Charging extra £40 to print boarding passes
Customer care – Ryanair has one-tenth the number of customer care attendants per passenger mile compared to BA.








INDIA


India's biggest carrier IndiGo, which announced on Wednesday a deal to buy 250 Airbus aircraft, has consistently racked up profits as rivals have drowned in red ink from cut-throat fare wars. 


No-frills IndiGo has posted six straight years of profits — even with high fuel taxes, ramshackle airport infrastructure and vicious fare fights — thanks to its zealous cost controls, analysts say. 


Billionaire airline co-founder Rahul Bhatia


• The plane order is also part of Indigo's drive to keep its fleet young — it retires its aircraft after six years — to minimise maintenance and fuel costs. 
• Analysts say IndiGo has taken a leaf from budget US carrier Southwest Airlines in containing costs by keeping operations simple. 
• It flies to fewer destinations than rivals but offers more flights on those busy routes to maximise plane-capacity and uses just one make — Airbus.
• landing-and-takeoff turnarounds and maintaining a lean staff-aircraft ratio. 
• IndiGo lone profit-maker among India's big airlines: with lesser borrowed money






Indeed sale-and-leaseback transactions that helped IndiGo record higher profits.
A sale and leaseback constitutes an arrangement where the seller of an asset leases back the same asset from the purchaser.













"the airline will receive a cash inflow which will then be used to pay down the debt associated with the aircraft. If the sale value is greater than the amount of debt against the aircraft, the airline will receive a positive cash flow."
A leasing company agrees to such an arrangement, they wrote, because it is provided with an asset and an established customer without having to buy a brand new aircraft, but still generates lease income from the airline.





IndiGo has been the most active user of sale-and-leaseback financing among no frills carriers, : IndiGo completed 37 such transactions in the past two years
But the key difference in IndiGo's strategy was to incorporate the purchase of 100 aircraft into its business plan even before launch. Other operators even now are talking of only a fraction of that order size, according to Kaul.
  
Humongous Order: "the airline will receive a cash inflow which will then be used to pay down the debt associated with the aircraft. If the sale value is greater than the amount of debt against the aircraft, the airline will receive a positive cash flow."
A leasing company agrees to such an arrangement, they wrote, because it is provided with an asset and an established customer without having to buy a brand new aircraft, but still generates lease income from the airline.
 "results in all manner of cost-saving efficiencies: we only need to train our mechanics. We only need extra parts inventory. If we have to swap a plane out at the last minute for maintenance, the fleet is totally interchangeable — all our on-board crews and ground crews are already familiar with it..."


Other cost-cutting measures: 
1. Turnaround time - An airline is charged for the duration its aircraft stays at the airport. Indigo has a faster turnaround time (time taken between landing and the next take-off) of 30 minutes. Point 5 is one of the reasons for this. Having a single make of aircraft again helps in this regard as the time taken by the crew gets optimized.
2. Employee Aircraft ratio - Lower employee aircraft ratio of 102 compared to Jet Airways's 130 and Air India's 262.
3. Stage Length - Average Stage length (flying time per flight) of 1.5 hours, which means not having to stock and serve hot meals in most flights. This again contributes to the low turnaround time.
4. Most Indian airlines take delivery of aircraft by sending their own pilots and engineers (to Toulouse in the case of Airbus). Indigo prefers to get them delivered to Delhi, this is costlier but it also leads to better utilization of the available pilots and the engineering crew
5. Route planning: They make their routes profitable. Wrong. They fly only on profitable routes and slots.




Marketing:
1. Little advertising spend.
2. High reliance on word of mouth marketing in its early days by establishing a reputation of being a no frills airline which is always clean and on time.
3. Strategic marketing - Indigo advertised heavily when it started international operations and also when Kingfisher was going bust, with catchphrases like 'Let the bad times roll… Fly IndiGo in good times and in bad times.' taking a dig at Kingfisher's tagline 'Fly the good times.' This move was criticized but it worked for Indigo.
Influence:
Finally, we come to the elephant in the room. IndiGo is privately held by two very low key people.
- Rahul Bhatia, who owns 50% of the airline, is in charge of operations. He has  almost two decades of experience in the travel business and, some say, contacts in the government. Does that mean acquiring the more profitable routes and slots? Maybe.
- Rakesh Gangwal who owns the remaining 50% has a long history in the US airline industry. He brings global networking and expertise to IndiGo. Does that help in better bargaining with manufacturers and other suppliers? Again, maybe.










*****************************************




                                             

Porn Ban and Prostitution

Prostitution has been called the world’s oldest “profession.” In reality, it is the world’s oldest “oppression” and continues to be one of the most overlooked human rights abuses of women on the planet today

Demand side of prostitution:

1.  Men—or the johns: While women continue to be branded as prostitutes, whores, sluts, hookers and harlots, the users of prostituted women are benignly labeled as clients, patrons, customers and johns. It’s impossible to tackle the myriad issues surrounding prostitution, however, “without taking a hard look at these men [johns], at their characters, actions and motivations. it is about entitlement, power and control. Johns seek brief encounters where they express selfish desires without the burden of responsibility or reciprocity. they asserted that payment of money removed all social and ethical obligations.
2.  the profiteers, e.g., pimps, brothels, escort services, clubs, etc., in the sex industries;
3. countries that complicity derive revenue from the sex industries;
4. a culture that indirectly creates a demand for victims by normalizing prostitution.

According to many sources, the sex industry and its ancillary operations in Nevada (such as loan fraud, money laundering, falsifying income tax returns and grand theft)

Alternate solutions :

Legalization :In Germany, legalization was supposed to enable women to get health insurance and retirement benefits, and to join unions, but few women have signed up for benefits or unions. The reason has to do with the basic nature of prostitution;

DECRIMINALIZATION : failed in Australia , Sweden

Decriminalization means the removal of laws against prostitution. In other words, buying a woman would be socially and legally equivalent to buying cigarettes. Decriminalization eliminates all laws and prohibits the state and law-enforcement officials from intervening in any prostitution-related activities or transactions.145 In New Zealand and Australia, for example, prostitution was decriminalized at the national level, meaning they removed all laws criminalizing prostitution, such as brothel keeping, etc. But decriminalization of prostitution in those countries resulted in an increase in illegal, hidden and street prostitution, and promoted sex trafficking. In Sweden, those who sell sex are decriminalized, but the buyers, pimps and traffickers are criminalized. In this case, decriminalization was part of an abolitionist approach.

Advocates who focus on the demand side of prostitution advise:

1.  targeting the johns and all players in the demand side of prostitution;
2.  abandoning the idea of legalization;
3. changing societal attitudes;
4. educating boys;
5.  enforcing the laws;
6.  and helping the women

Sweden’s law against the buying of “sexual services” has been a model that could be emulated elsewhere. Sweden has clearly chosen to resist the legalization/regulation of prostitution and to address prostitution as a form of violence against women.

• In addition, men soliciting sex from women in prostitution need to face consequences for their behaviors, and a john school is a good first step.
•  The late Norma Hotaling, an ex-prostituted woman, started “john schools” in the 1990s for men arrested for soliciting a prostituted woman. The goal was to educate men about the harm they were doing to women and girls and the risks to themselves when they engaged in illegal activity. Hotaling said that only when men’s “demand” for victims was countered would the number of victims decrease. Her “john school” project has become a model and is replicated throughout the United States and the world.

ABANDONING THE IDEA OF LEGALIZATION.: calling for the legalization of prostitution, they are dignifying and professionalizing the women in prostitution. But dignifying prostitution as work doesn’t dignify the women. It simply dignifies the sex industry.

Amsterdam is known for prostitution. Its red light district draws tourists from around the globe in search of sex and voyeurism. So, how did legalizing prostitution work for Amsterdam? Amsterdam Mayor Job Cohen admitted that the Dutch experiment to end abuse by legalizing prostitution has failed. Amsterdam Mayor Job Cohen admitted that “We are in the midst of modern slavery.”

ENFORCING THE LAWS.: What is needed, however, are successful prosecutions of individuals and criminal networks that traffic and pimp women. This will eliminate a significant portion of transitional organized crime and corruption that exists in countries throughout the world.

, Sweden is a role model in their practice of criminalizing the buying of sexual services.

SOROPTIMIST CLUB GRANTS FOR WOMEN AND GIRLS—: LIVE YOUR DREAM grants help to undo the damage

Flesh trade very young, on average, at age 14. In the United States, the average age of entry into prostitution is 12 to 14 years old: "so no choice "

enduring incest, abuse and rape by family members or acquaintances, which accommodates them to violence and exploitation until eventually they believe this is their role in life.

Cycle : porn : voilence, abuse, girls believe this is role, supply

“deafening silence” regarding racism - black women : wider hips

Porn Ban:

• sex addiction in r young people and create unsavoury expectations of appearance and performance
• due to the internet has seen a broadening of the genre to include videos depicting rape, gagging, physical abuse, vomit, faeces, and god knows what else. 

The “most critical component of sex trafficking prevention is reducing the demand for commercial sex,” Mickelwait noted.

What kind of culture is producing so many men who are eager to buy women and children for sex, contributing to a $32 billion annual human trafficking industry?…

The same culture that produces and perpetuates a $100 billion per year pornography industry.”

Because that’s what pornography is. Filmed prostitution. Artificial entertainment. Emotionless intimacy.

But, pornography is glamorized in our 21st century American culture. It is bright. Glowing. Normal. Exciting. Erotic. Even embraced. These adjectives are starkly opposite from words we would use to describe the scenes of terror in the dense darkness that shrouds women and children who are forced to suffer agony at the hands of their captors and clients.

The demand is rampant. And the method of supply is repelling. Victims in the sex trade are being forced to view pornography, imitate it, and then be filmed against their will, with no say over who will profit from it and who will watch it. And who are these consumers? Adolescent males. Curious youth. Husbands who rationalize. Women who seek to please. Couples who want “inspiration.” Men who prioritize pleasure over relationship. The people surrounding us: friends, boyfriends, parents, neighbors, coworkers.

• What pοrn teaches them is that unless you have a large penis and an eternal erection, you’re not good enough. What pοrn teaches these boys is that hands have no role to play in sex, and by all means, sex is more or less a male-dominated activity.

Such material, he argues, is increasingly and disastrously a boy’s introduction to human sexuality. “It’s such a bad introduction because it eliminates romance and love. It’s only visual so you don’t realise what you’re missing – the touching, the kissing, the communication, the negotiation of boundaries. When you see 100,000 instances of it, it becomes the social norm. Every boy believes this is what women want, what girls want.”

From <http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/may/09/philip-zimbardo-boys-are-a-mess>

•  impact  of pοrnography on girls is no less. “Pοrn has been creating a mindset that if you want to be worthy of love, you have to be worthy of sexual desire, and these days: worthy of sexual desire almost equals being like a pοrn star.
• "impression that aberrant sexual practices are more common than they really are, and that promiscuous behavior is normal."
• Criminals and organized crime groups have always been the organizers and moneymakers of the sex industry. In the United States, they were the founders and controllers of the pornography industry for decades.
•  Sex industries contribute to secondary illegal activity, such as money laundering, which is needed to convert illegal cash into useable funds.
• The criminal networks that traffic women are fully transnational. Some are composed of a few loosely connected individuals, while others are highly organized crime syndicates, such as the Mafia, the Yakuza, Triads and “Russian” crime groups.

From <http://www.uri.edu/artsci/wms/hughes/demand.htm>

AND THEN IT GOES INTO EXTREMES LIKE : 1999,, Cambodia; live bondage sex show to his Internet site .

 His pornography web site, “Rape Camp,” featured “Asian sex slaves” who were used for “bondage, discipline and humiliation.” The women on the web site were blindfolded, gagged and/or bound with ropes while being used in sex acts; some had clothespins clipped to their breasts (

sandler faced up to five years in jail in Cambodia for violating the law on human trafficking and sexual exploitation

None of the women were interviewed. No information about their well-being, experiences or wishes was included in the news stories.

From <http://www.uri.edu/artsci/wms/hughes/rapecamp.htm>

From <http://www.youthconnect.in/2014/10/15/this-man-explaining-why-he-stopped-watching-porn-is-going-to-make-you-want-to-stop-watching-porn/>

From <http://www.thewire.com/national/2010/03/pros-and-cons-of-porn/24995/>

Ladies night, where is ugly men's night ?

 In choosing how to handle the commercial growth of the Internet, Magaziner successfully advocated for the Internet to become a “market driven medium, with no governmental regulation.” Because the Internet is a decentralized medium he claimed it would be impossible to censor it, so it was better to not interfere at all. Although it is not publicly stated, the U.S. government clearly adopted a policy of non-interference with the sex industry to enable it to be the pioneer of online commerce. Even the worst images, such as bestiality and torture have not been prosecuted.

Arguments against:

It's a clear violation of Article 21 (Right to Personal Liberty)

• Why only suppliers punished ? Demanders should be too. To combat the demand supply issue, removing suppliers will only deal to more players coming in. But removing demand will deal to longer, impact
• Don’t impose one persons own moral/ethical/world view on this subject. It can be seen as sexual freedom

Porno is widely available – so what? We still have the ability to make a decision to go visit a porno site or to buy a porno magazine. The main distinction is that we have the ability to choose whether we want to visit a porno site or not

Thirdly, my opponent mentions several sub-genres of porn such as fetishes and rape ect. First, I would like you to find me a dedicated rape-site that is based in the United States. The fact is, you're not gonna find one because it would violate the Miller Test. You mind find them based in other nations, but not the US.

Thirdly, does this make porn more harmful than homicide novels or CSI? Both contain disgusting and perhaps violent imagery, yet we accept homicide novels and CSI with little reservation

The Miller test was developed in the 1973 case Miller v. California.It has three parts:

• Whether "the average person, applying contemporary community standards", would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest,
• Whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct or excretory functions[3] specifically defined by applicable state law,
• Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.[4]

The work is considered obscene only if all three conditions are satisfied.

From <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_test>

https://www.soroptimist.org/whitepapers/whitepaperdocs/wpprostitution.pdf

Some history :

1.  In 2013 April 18 a lawyer named Kamlesh Vaswani from Indore, M.P., filed a first of it's kind case in court seeking a COMPLETE BAN on pornography.
2. Sure there have been a few requests before it also but this was the first time when the local bench was surpassed and an appeal was made directly to the high court.
3.  It was around mid-December 2014 when the first rumors of the present government seeking a complete ban came out
4.  The Information Technology Act, 2000 (IT Act) Chapter XI Paragraph 67, the Government of India clearly specifies online pornography as a punishable offense. The Indian Penal Code, 1860 section 293 also specifies, in clear terms, the law against sale of obscene objects to minors.
5. The law as it pertains to pornography or "obscenity" is laid down in Section 292 of the Indian Penal Code, which was amended by the IT Act to include electronic data.
6.  If you go to the website of cyber laws India: they need revision

Public-private partnership (PPP)

The 15-year history of public-private partnership (PPP) in India is mainly about creating an enabling environment to get private capital to invest in infrastructure assets:  result-we now have a fairly large basket of operating assets. The flip side is that we have begun facing the problems associated with operating contracts.

These contracts are for periods ranging from 15 to 60 years. The problem is there is an ostrich-like belief that once negotiated, ground conditions will continue to hold forever; that the terms of the agreement between the private party and the state are cast in stone; and that any changes required can only attract charges of crony capitalism. So, even while economists find it extremely difficult to predict growth and inflation for the next quarter, assumptions on project cost, traffic, tariff, input costs, et al that go into preparing a winning bid, are expected to be inviolate and unchanging.

Why? Because, simply put, it is the job of the private sector to forecast the future and take risk. That may indeed ring true for a wide range of market goods, where there is flexibility to morph, enter and exit. But for strait-jacketed, lumpy, fixed infra projects in regulated environments, the truth is that the task of forecasting for PPP bids gets highly complex  often, just intelligent guesswork packaged professionally.

One, bidders who lost out could take government bodies to court saying the incentives arising out of renegotiation were not extended to them at the bidding stage and, thus, they were unfairly edged out;

Two, the sanctity of a bid-out contract is violated and may encourage many more project developers to expect post-win renegotiation;

Three, there is a moral hazard in that private bidders know their losses will be wiped clean by subsequent government largesse while their profits do not have to be shared;

Four, distinguishing between projects that are unviable because of genuine unforeseen developments and projects that are unviable because the bidders bid at predatory prices or made commercial errors of judgement, are difficult to sift.

COMMON ROADBLOCKS

Public partner risks Political decisions Natural disasters Force majeure Land acquisition* Statutory clearances* Poor concession-design** Private partner risks Revenue (traffic) Financing (interest rate and currency) Construction Other project costs Input costs Operations Change in regulations Unanticipated competitive projects Political interference at local levels Significant change in economic landscape, and macroeconomic shocks 41.5 per cent have undergone renegotiation;

The government is clearly listening. On May 16, the PMO issued a statement saying, To speed up infrastructure development, the prime minister has asked the Planning Commission to draft legislation that would establish an institutional mechanism to resolve disputes in public contracts.

On Yahoo

Hardware companies, like Apple or Fitbit, profit from gadgets. For everyone else, though, it more or less comes down to advertising. Social-media companies, like Facebook or Twitter, may make cool products that connect their users, but they earn revenue by selling ads against the content those users create. Innovative media companies, like Vox or Hulu, make money in much the same way, except that they’re selling ads against content created by professionals. Google, which has basically devoured the search business, still makes a vast majority of its fortune by selling ads against our queries.

Yahoo essentially invented the online-advertising business.Yahoo quickly expanded beyond its directory to create a multitude of ad-supported products. The company aimed to be all things to all web users, and for most of a decade, it was a wildly successful strategy. In 1997, Yahoo added chat rooms, classified ads and an email service. In 1998, it introduced sports, games, movies, real estate, a calendar, file sharing, auctions, shopping and an address book. 

 a new generation of start-ups was focusing on perfecting one single product. Soon enough, Yahoo was losing out to eBay in auctions, Google in search and Craigslist in classifieds. Then Facebook came along, replacing Yahoo as the home page for millions of people. The advertising dollars soon followed, and Yahoo’s revenue flattened. 

Yahoo had only two ways to increase its revenue.

• could display more ads by attracting more people to its products — a plan that would require inventing (or acquiring) new products, improving old products or some combination.
• Alternately, it could elevate ad prices by upgrading its content.

Yahoo had fallen so far behind its competitors in building successful back-end technology, like real-time advertising auctions and search, that it should cede most of those businesses altogether. In the process, the company could also shed more than half of its 15,000 employees

Marissa Mayer, the wunderkind engineer who oversaw the user interface of Google’s search engine

In 2005, Yahoo invested $1 billion for a 40 percent stake in a little-known company called Alibaba. It turned out to be a remarkably prescient bet. Weeks before Mayer was hired in July 2012, Yahoo sold half its 40 percent stake back to Alibaba for $7.1 billion. As a part of that deal, Alibaba was offered incentives to hold an initial public offering within the next few years. Suddenly the easiest way for Wall Street to make a bet on Alibaba — a hot start-up in a hot market, guaranteed an I.P.O. — was through an investment in Yahoo.

This was a tremendous benefit to an incoming C.E.O., essentially offering a two-year air cover. Without having to manage the company’s stock price, inevitably one of a chief executive’s most distracting tasks, Mayer could focus on acquiring start-ups, jump-starting products and making strategic changes. Moreover, in two years she would be able to use the Alibaba cash to reinvest in her putative growth. 

Steve Jobs may have resurrected Apple, and IBM was able to reinvent itself from a P.C. company into a business-services firm. 

Hours after entering Yahoo’s complex on the morning of July 17, 2012, she set up her computer to log into the company’s code base so she could personally make changes, much like the founder of a tiny tech firm might do. 

• Cafeteria and company phones upgrade

Mayer wanted to narrow its product portfolio down to approximately a dozen from more than 100, determined to ensure that Yahoo had the best mobile app for each.

 Mayer would regularly interrogate designers about the minutest details of display and user experience.

Mayer also announced that she wanted to repair Yahoo’s search engine, her specialty at Google.

 Mayer added a tool to the company’s internal network that allowed employees to view their stock compensation.

Mayer quickly became infatuated with the idea that Yahoo could attract more sophisticated consumers.

She was less sure, however, about how to monetize them. 

Yahoo Shine, with its $45 million in yearly revenue, was shot down.

Failed in strategic hires

Mayer’s largest management problem, however, related to the start-up culture she had tried to instill.  Mayer also favored a system of quarterly performance reviews,system was meant to encourage hard work and weed out underperformers, but it soon produced the exact opposite. Because only so many 4s and 5s could be allotted, talented people no longer wanted to work together; strategic goals were sacrificed, as employees did not want to change projects and leave themselves open to a lower score.

Starboard began its campaign to force an AOL merger

Major Yahoo shareholders have recently begun collaborating on a series of spreadsheets that calculate that AOL and Yahoo are worth between 70 and 80 percent more when combined than they are apart. Some investors are further attracted to the merger because it will bring AOL’s chief executive, Tim Armstrong, into Yahoo. Like Mayer, Armstrong made his career as an early Google employee — but he was in charge of its sales force.

From <http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/magazine/what-happened-when-marissa-mayer-tried-to-be-steve-jobs.html?_r=1>

Small life lessons

IMPORTANCE OF GOAL SETTING

Why to set goal?

Say you have a goal to sell a million apps <relevant example>

Why would you set such a goal?

Well, who doesn’t want to be popular, rich ?

The truth is that you set goals :

Because of what it will make of you in order to achieve them

I repeat

We set goals because of what the goal will make of you in order to achieve them.

The path is important. To sell a 1000 apps you have to learn marketing, you have to learn people skills, you have to complete, you need to have an economic moat around your product. All these skills are important and this is why you should set goals.

Compounding in daily habits:

One of the major human flaws is that we perceive everything linearly.

"I have been working on this idea for a month and I see no results"

"I have been exercising for 10 days now and nothing has changed"

Compounding is everywhere. You have to be wise enough to see it.

The results will compound and come back to you.

CHAINS OF Habits

Success does not come from a few big decisions.

It starts from the smallest of disciplines.

For example, given a chocolate bar and an apple, what do you chose?

Any human will take the chocolate bar, we perceive things linearly. But think this way, this habit or this choice is repeated for 30 years, what did you chose? From the choice of a  healthy body vs obesity/heart diseases. You got to be smarter than that.

Again you will say, its just one small decision. But this choice will compound. Every time you chose an apple, you increase the probability of making the same choice again.

Imagine that every action will stand for next 30 years. Neurons that wire together fire together. " My actions right now will stand for eternity and I have to act right now to decide how this will build up for next 30 years. " . By choosing exercise / study /newspaper, I am increasing the probability that I would chose this action again in my lifetime.

I am wiring myself for success by making small choices

Again, take the example of brushing your teeth before you go to sleep. Such a small discipline, such good results. If you do it today, it’s a good probability you will do it tomorrow, and maybe continuously for next 20 years.

TO BUILD UP A NETWORK OF RIGHT PEOPLE :  Surround yourself with good people . The process involves compounding of good people around you over time through these steps. When you meet someone new, do something nice for them. Open the gate, give a compliment. Pay attention to how they behave. The takers will just receive and try to suck out more out of you. The matchers will feel the urge to do something for you in return. Try to stick around with matchers and check if they are givers. Givers have to kept close and cherished.

Keep distance from the takers : respond to them slowly, try not to receive calls but do not burn bridges.

Adam Grant: Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success

Takers have a distinctive signature: they like to get more than they give. They tilt reciprocity in their own favor, putting their own interests ahead of others’ needs. Takers believe that the world is a competitive, dog-eat-dog place. They feel that to succeed, they need to be better than others. To prove their competence, they self-promote and make sure they get plenty of credit for their efforts. Garden-variety takers aren’t cruel or cutthroat; they’re just cautious and self-protective. “If I don’t look out for myself first,” takers think, “no one will.”

If you’re a taker, you help others strategically, when the benefits to you outweigh the personal costs. If you’re a giver, you might use a different cost-benefit analysis: you help whenever the benefits to others exceed the personal costs. Alternatively, you might not think about the personal costs at all, helping others without expecting anything in return. 

We become matchers, striving to preserve an equal balance of giving and getting. Matchers operate on the principle of fairness: when they help others, they protect themselves by seeking reciprocity. If you’re a matcher, you believe in tit for tat, and your relationships are governed by even exchanges of favors.

1. To build trust : treat every information shared with you as confidential unless you have explicit permission to share
2. Don’t tell anybody what to do. You can just share your experiences. People hate Being told what to do. Giving advice is like saying "I know better what to do in your shoes.". Draw a 4 quadrant chart to see if your advice works vs it was accepted  and you lose in every way

Ideas taken from role models like Jim Rohn, Guy Spier, Warren Buffett and multiple books