Friday, December 28, 2012

Marketing Glossary

Packaging

The activities of designing and producing the container or wrapper for a product

Penetration pricing

Penetration pricing involves the setting of lower, rather than higher prices in order to achieve a large, if not dominant market share

Penetration strategy

A marketing strategy based on low prices and extensive advertising to increase a product's market share. For penetration strategy to be effective the market will have to be large enough for the seller to be able to sustain low profit margins.

Personal selling

Oral communication with potential buyers of a product with the intention of making a sale. The personal selling may focus initially on developing a relationship with the potential buyer, but will always
ultimately end with an attempt to "close the sale

Finance News

StanChart IDRs up 5% as Sebi allows conversion


Indian depository receipts (IDRs) of Standard Chartered were up more than 5 percent after the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) allowed partial conversion of IDRs into underlying shares.The capital market regulator’s move is aimed at improving liquidity in the instrument by making more attractive for investors.
“To retain the domestic liquidity, it is decided to allow partial fungibility of IDRs (ie redemption/conversion of IDRs into underlying equity shares) in a financial year to the extent of 25 percent of the IDRs originally issued,” a Business Standard report said quoting Sebi circular.
IDRs are depository receipts denominated in rupees. Shares underlying the IDRs are deposited with the custodian, who holds the shares on behalf of the depository, according to the report.
Though IDRs were introduced a few years back, Standard Chartered is the only foreign company to have listed IDRs here.
The Sebi move follows a proposal in the 2012-13 budget to allow two-way fungibility of IDRs, subject to a ceiling. The proposal was aimed at increasing the participation of foreign companies in the domestic capital market.


HR Article

The Educated Training Consumer

Why Is Training Undervalued?


Training and development activities can increase the capabilities and abilities of most organizations. Virtually every recent management leaders (eg. Deming, Crosby, Senge), have stressed the importance of learning as a primary tool for organizational success. That said, training as a whole, is not consistently valued by managers or staff. Even when managers support training through what they say, when the time comes to allocate resources for training, it is often the new photocopier that wins out.

Staff can also be ambivalent. We've noticed a shift in the perceptions of employees regarding training. Ten years ago, training was often regarded as a pleasant break from work, a chance to learn a few things and meet others. Now overworked staff are more hesitant to even attend. Being away from the workplace for a day means that somehow a day's work must be made up.

Since we work in the training delivery sector, you might expect us to attribute the undervaluing of training to neanderthal managers, prehistoric like organizations, or burned out employees. In fact, we think the explanation must lie with the profession itself. Perhaps training is undervalued because it often doesn't provide value! If that is so, then the responsibility must lie squarely with training practitioners. We are going to look at some aspects of the training profession so that you can become a more educated training consumer.

The Problems With Training


In our years in the training profession we have made the following observations:

1. Trainers are often more interested in selling a program than helping you and your staff improve performance or organization effectiveness.

2. Trainers generally move into training from other jobs. Few people choose training as a primary career choice. Hence they are unlikely to have undergone rigorous training in psychology, learning, interpersonal relationships, etc. They are less likely to have formal training in the content they will be teaching.

3. The training profession is dominated by a culture that includes the notion that a trainer does not need to have advanced knowledge about what s/he is teaching.

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Thought for the Day

Marketing Glossary

Combination brand
 A combination brand name brings together a family brand name and an individual brand name. The idea here is to provide some association for the product with a strong family brand name but maintaining some distinctiveness so that customers know what they are getting

Competitive advantage
A competitive advantage is a clear performance differential over the competition on factors that are important to customers

Competitor benchmarking
Competitor benchmarking compares customer satisfaction with the products, services and relationships of the business with those of key competitors

Consumer buyers
Consumer buyers are those who purchase items for their personal consumption

Consumer durables
Consumer durables have low volume but high unit value. Consumer durables are often further divided into White goods (e.g. fridgefreezers; cookers; dishwashers; microwaves) and Brown goods (e.g. DVD players; games consoles; personal computers)

HR Article

What's Training Good For Anyway?

There are good reasons to mandate training and development in your organization, and there are bad reasons for mandating training.  There are ALSO good reasons for NOT training, in some circumstances, and bad reasons to refuse.  Knowing what training can and cannot accomplish enables you to make the right decisions at the right time, ensuring that your limited training dollars are used effectively.

The Chaotic Work World


If our work worlds were stable, and un-changing,  we might not need to worry too much about training.  We might still do it to provide employee development but it would be less critical to our organization's success.
It ain't so.  All you need to do is look around at your own organization, and what you are likely to see is significant changes that have occurred during the last year.  You may have lived through down-sizing, re-structuring, changed mandates, increased workloads, flattening of management structure, and a host of other changes.  It is not likely that these changes will cease in the future, and we may be looking at changed political imperatives that will result in movement towards Special Operating Agencies, and making government more entrepreneurial.

You know all this.  Change has accelerated to the point where some organizations are in chaos, and most are at least staggered.  What all this means is that as our work worlds change, new skills, knowledge and concepts are needed to achieve our corporate goals.  And, our personal goals.  Just to stay even, and just to keep our sanity.

Since change is occurring at such a rapid rate, while we may have taken our jobs at a time when we were fully qualified, we may now have gaps in our knowledge.  At a management level, the skills needed to manage a flat organization, a Total Quality Management organization, or a Special Operating Agency are different than those we have.  At an employee level, it is no different.  Technology changes, or changes in the way organizations are managed, or even increased workloads change the actual JOBS in an organization, and change them in such away that new skills and abilities are needed so that new expectations can be met.

What Training Can Do

Training CAN accomplish many things.  It can help people learn the new skills that are required to meet new expectations, both formal and informal.  For example, a support staff person may have been hired originally for his/her ability to type, to answer the phone and file.  But now, with increased workloads, we want that person to be able to do much more...perhaps to solve client problems, to use desktop publishing processes, to handle more of the day-to-day issues, so we can use our time more effectively.  Training can help people accept the challenge of their evolving jobs.

Friday, December 21, 2012

Thought for the Day

"I believe in God, only I spell it Nature."

That's what Oneness is about. And to quote John Muir: "Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves." And Albert Einstein: "Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better."

Marketing Glossary

Extinction pricing
Extinction pricing has the overall objective of eliminating competition, and involves setting very low prices in the short term in order to ‘undercut’ competition, or alternatively repel potential new entrants.

Family brand name
A family brand name is used for all products. By building customer trust and loyalty to the family brand name, all products that use the brand can benefit.

Family life cycle
The stages of family life based on demographic data that are useful in defining the markets for certain goods and services. Each group has its own specific and distinguishable needs and interests.

Fast-moving consumer goods
Fast-moving consumer goods are those that sell in high volumes, with low unit value, and have fast consumer repurchase. Good examples include ready meals, baked beans, newspapers etc

Focus group
A small group of sample customers who are brought together into a group discussion to measure their response to a marketing stimulus such as a new brand or product

HR Article

ROLE OF THE FACILITATOR


Most people associate the word "facilitator"with the training environment.  Often, that person at the front of the room leading a training sessions, is  referred to as the course facilitator. While it is true that some seminar  leaders do "facilitate", the facilitation role is often important in other areas.  For example, the chairperson at a meeting often takes on the responsibility  for facilitating the meeting, rather than "running it". The government  employee involved in mediation of disputes between other parties is also a  facilitator. Human resources staff members often facilitate discussions in  various contexts. And staff that work with groups of stakeholders and  members of the public may be well advised to take on a facilitating role rather than a directing one.

For those of you who already are involved in facilitating, or those of you  that may do so in the future, we are going to look at what the facilitation  role entails.

Basic Definition

A facilitator is an individual who's job is to help to manage a process of  information exchange. While an  expert's" role is to offer advice,  particularly about the content of a discussion, the facilitator's role is to help  with HOW the discussion is proceeding. In short, the facilitator's responsibility is to address the journey, rather than  the destination.

When Facilitation is Appropriate
A facilitation approach is appropriate when the organization is concerned  not only with the decision that is made, but also with the way the decision  is made. For example, an organization may be moving away from an  autocratic style of management to a participatory one. So, to encourage  staff to embrace more involvement, the manager may choose to act as a  facilitator rather than an expert or the final arbiter for the decision. In this  situation longer term process goals become as important as getting a good  decision.
As another example, let's envision a government employee who's task is to  communicate with members of the public/interest groups regarding  legislation and regulation. Since one purpose of this communication is to  reduce resistance to legislation and regulations, the employee can choose a  more facilitative, consultative role, rather than being a simple "bearer of  information". In this case, the facilitation role is more likely to encourage  others to be more cooperative.

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Thought for the day

Education … has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.
- G. M. Trevelyan British historian

Marketing Glossary

Normal goods

Normal goods have a positive income elasticity of demand so as income rise more is demand at each price level

Objectives

Measurable aims of a business set for a given period (e.g. marketing objectives for the next year)
Occasion segmentation

A basis of segmenting a market based on occasions when buyers get the idea to make a purchase, actually buy, or use a purchased item.

Opportunities

Opportunities are any feature of the external environment which creates conditions that a business can exploit to its advantage. If the business is successful in exploiting opportunities, then it will be better
placed to achieve its objectives.

HR Article

The Value of Values Clarification
- JUST STOP THAT NAVEL GAZING

We walked in, individually, and in pairs.  Like many other branches, we had interpersonal conflicts, and many of us felt that even in with our small size, we weren't all pulling in the same direction.  It just seemed we were not on the same page of the book.

The manager, also a consultant, decided that what we needed was to share our values and beliefs, so that a) we could better understand each other (and thus, reduce conflict), and b) we could develop a "held-in-common" set of values and beliefs about what we did.  After a brief introduction, the manager asked us to complete a values clarification survey, that listed a number of things on it, like honesty, teamwork, friendship.  We were asked to arrange these in some priority order...I think there were other parts to it, but can't recall.  After we had completed the thing, we went 'round the table discussing what we valued.  One person had listed love as his primary value, another teamwork, and yet, another independence.  It was a jolly time.

We trusted the facilitator enough so that we didn't question the process or the purpose, but you could see the somewhat perplexed looks on the faces of the people there.  We had real problems, and here we were talking about things so abstract that they had no relevance to our everyday life.  Nobody voiced this concern.

By the end of the day, we had discovered that we were all different.  Armed with this information, we could all now explain why someone else acted like a jerk.  The next day there was some brief discussion between employees.  "What was that all about?" one person said.  But, after a day or two, we simply forgot all about it.

Sound familiar? It's becoming more common.  A consultant or manager will get it in their head that problems can be addressed through a discussion of values and beliefs of the people that work there.  Some sort of retreat is set up, and a facilitator helps people to clarify what they hold dear.  The basic premise of the exercise is that a common set of organizational values and beliefs can be created that will guide individual and collective behaviour.  The reality is that almost nothing happens.

On the surface of it, clarifying values, beliefs and principles seems to be an effective way of getting people on the same wavelength in terms of how the organization is to conduct itself. Unfortunately, this process is based on some erroneous ideas about the role that values, beliefs and principles play in influencing human behaviour, both on an individual and collective basis.

Thursday, December 13, 2012

Thought for the day

"The barrier between success is not something which exists in the real world: it is composed purely and simply of doubts about ability."

If you believe you can do something, then you almost certainly can, provided you are open to learning. Simple as that.

Marketing Glossary

Multi-segment strategy

A strategy by which a business directs its marketing efforts towards two or more market segments by developing a marketing mix for each

New product

A new product can be defined as a good, service or idea that is “perceived” by some potential customers as new. It may have been available for some time, but many potential customers have not yet adopted the product nor decided to become a regular user of the product.

Niche marketing

Niche marketing refers to the exploitation of comparatively small market segments by businesses that decide to concentrate their efforts. Niche segments exist in nearly all markets – for example the self-build sports car segment of the motor industry

Non-personal communication

Methods of promotion that do not generate any personal feedback. Advertising is the best example of this

Business News

Walmart to apply US laws to Indian operations; wants anti-bribery undertaking from store owners

Walmart is demanding anti-bribery undertakings from landlords of its Indian stores along with rights to inspect their books, the latest blowback from its global anti-bribery campaign that has put an unflattering spotlight on its fledgling India operations.
The US supermarket group's India venture, BhartiBSE 0.03 % Walmart, now at the centre of a raucous political debate on the entry of foreign firms into the supermarkets sector, wants landlords of all its stores in India, including Easyday stores operated by partner Bharti Enterprises, to give undertakings saying they are not party to and will not indulge in corrupt practices, effectively bringing them under the ambit of US anti-bribery laws.
Landlords are not only expected to certify that they have not paid any bribes while building the premises, but also give undertakings that give Bharti Walmart powers to periodically check their books and other documents, a person with direct knowledge of the situation told ET.
A second source confirmed such an exercise was underway, and noted that KPMG had been tasked with securing undertakings from landlords. A landlord of an Easyday store in the NCR said a Bharti Walmart executive had called him earlier this week to inform him about an anti-bribery agreement that landlords must sign as part of the Foreign Corruption Practices Act, or FCPA, a 1977 US law that bars American firms and individuals from bribing government officials in any foreign country wherever they are operating or working in.

Bharti Walmart has engaged KPMG to spearhead its anti-corruption campaign in India, and the consulting firm has undertaken programmes to sensitise employees about FCPA. It is also tasked with certifying vendors that are fit to do business with the retailer.

Asked about the undertakings from landlords, Bharti Walmart said it was implementing a "number of specific, concrete actions to strengthen our compliance programme in India".

"We take compliance with FCPA very seriously," a Bharti Walmart spokesperson said in an emailed reply to a list of questions from ET.

HR Article

Understanding Nonverbal Communication

Communication is more than just an exchange of dialogue.  Sometimes, even the most powerful messages are unsaid or nonverbal.  Nonverbal communication reminds you of what is inside another person’s mind.  Emotions and thoughts are usually conveyed without the use of words or voice, but the best communicators are sensitive to its messages.  Nonverbal communication includes facial expression, gestures, body language, and the use of space.

A study over at UCLA indicated that around 93 percent of communication effectiveness is determined by nonverbal cues.  Another study shows that the impact of a singing performance was determined seven percent on the words used, 38 percent by voice quality, and 55 percent by nonverbal communication.
Nonverbal behavior also reflects a person’s true emotions and thoughts.  A speaker may try to say one thing, but his body language and the tiniest of facial expressions tells otherwise.

However, multicultural differences in body language and gestures are usually open to misinterpretation.  Greeks would nod their heads when they mean “no,” which we would instantly misunderstand for a “yes.”  Brazilians, meanwhile, would find the OK sign vulgar.  With the thumb and index finger forming a circle and the three other fingers are extended, for them it means “you’re an a-hole.”
With these in mind, nonverbal communication can be a vital tool in screening job candidates.  If you want to determine what is really on each interviewee’s mind, you need to pay close attention to the following.

Article

12-12-12: Is today a good day for making a new beginning in life?

Mankind's belief in dates where the day, month and year all harmonise would have been put to the acid test if the ill-fated Titanic had rammed into an iceberg on December 12, 1912.

The collision happened on April 14, 1912, so the belief that synchronised, sequentially-numbered dates are lucky has endured. Jessica Ferri's blog notes that David's Bridal (one of the largest bridal retailers in the US) has estimated that approximately 7,500 brides will tie the knot today, a whopping 1,446% increase from December 12, 2011.

And AFP estimates that Singapore will see 540 couples getting married today, eight times the number married on the same day last year, and Hong Kong four times as many. Marry Abroad UK is reported as saying that there has been a 15% increase in inquiries about 12-12-12 even though the date falls outside the traditional wedding season of May to September. American numerologist Daniel Hardt has noted, "The date reduces to 11 (12 + 12 + 2012), which connotes a high degree of spiritual awareness and also brings sensitivity and romance to the marriage, but there is a danger of one or both parties taking things too seriously."

The only other hitch is that 12-12-12 falls on a Wednesday and not a weekend. In India, the media has already informed us that quite a number of expecting parents are keen on having their babies delivered today. The exact number will be known in a few days. With competition for everything getting so intense, being born on the right day could give the tiny tot the winning edge, or so parents would like to believe.

Who knows, a future prime minister, the next Sachin Tendulkar or India's second Nobel laureate for literature may be born today when Rajinikanth's fans will be celebrating his 62nd birthday!

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Thought for the day

Marketing Glossary

Market

A market is the demand for a particular product or service, often measured by sales during a specified period.

Market challenger

A business in a market that is fighting hard to increase its market share

Market concentration

Market concentration is the proportion of market value that is owned by the leading brands or products/companies in the market. Where the market leaders own a large part of the overall market, the market is said to be highly concentrated. By contrast, where the market leader has a relatively small market share and there are many other competitors, a market is said to be “fragmented”

Market development

The process of growing sales by offering existing products (or new versions of them) to new customer groups (as opposed to simply attempting to increase the company’s share of current markets).

HR Article

Estimating Time Accurately
Establishing Realistic Project Timelines

Have you ever been on a project where the deadline was way too tight?Chances are that tempers were frayed, sponsors were unhappy, and team members were working ridiculous hours. Chances are, too, that this happened because someone underestimated the amount of work needed to complete the project.

People often underestimate the amount of time needed to implement projects, particularly when they're not familiar with the work that needs to be done. Be realistic... For instance, they may not take into account unexpected events or urgent high priority work; and they may fail to allow for the full complexity of the job. Clearly, this is likely to have serious negative consequences further down the line.

This is why it's important to estimate time accurately, if your project is to be successful. In this article, we look at a process for making good time estimates, and we explore some of the estimating methods that you can use.

Why Estimate Time Accurately?

Accurate time estimation is a crucial skill in project management. Without it, you won't know how long your project will take, and you won't be able to get commitment from the people who need to sign it off.
Even more importantly for your career, sponsors often judge whether a project has succeeded or failed depending on whether it has been delivered on time and on budget. To have a chance of being successful as a project manager, you need to be able to negotiate sensible budgets and achievable deadlines.
The World's Most Powerful People

There are nearly 7.1 billion people on the planet. These are the 71 that matter the most.

What do the president of the United States, the Pope and the founder of Facebook all have in common? They’re all featured on Forbes’ 2012 ranking of the World’s Most Powerful People –an annual look at the heads of state, financiers, philanthropists and entrepreneurs who truly run the world.

To compile the list, we considered hundreds of candidates from various walks of life all around the globe, and measured their power along four dimensions. First, we asked whether the candidate has power over lots of people. Pope Benedict XVI, ranked #5 on our list, is the spiritual leader of more than a billion Catholics, or about 1/6th of the world’s population. Michael Duke (#17), CEO of Wal-Mart Stores, employs two million people.

Next we assessed the financial resources controlled by each person. Are they relatively large compared to their peers? For heads of state we used GDP, while for CEOs, we looked at measures like their company’s assets and revenues. When candidates have a high personal net worth –like the world’s richest man, Carlos Slim Helu (#11)– we also took that into consideration. In certain instances, like Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al Saud (#7), we considered other valuable resources at the candidate’s disposal –like 20% of the world’s known oil reserves.

Then we determined if the candidate is powerful in multiple spheres. There are only 71 slots on our list – one for every 100 million people on the planet – so being powerful in just one area is often not enough. Our picks project their influence in myriad ways: New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg (#16) has power because he’s a politician, because he’s a billionaire, because he’s a media magnate, and because he’s a major philanthropist.

Lastly, we made sure that the candidates actively used their power. Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin (#3) scored points because he so frequently shows his strength — like when he jails protestors.
To calculate the final rankings, ten senior Forbes editors ranked all of our candidates in each of these four dimensions of power, and those individual rankings were averaged into a composite score.
U.S. President Barack Obama emerged, unanimously, as the world’s most powerful person, for the second year running. Obama was the decisive winner of the 2012 U.S. presidential election, and now he gets four more years to push his agenda.The President faces major challenges, including an unresolved budget crisis, stubbornly high unemployment and renewed unrest in the Middle East. But Obama remains the unquestioned commander in chief of the world’s greatest military, and head of its sole economic and cultural superpower.
The second most powerful person in the world also happens to be the most powerful woman: Angela Merkel, the chancellor of Germany, jumps up from #4 last year to take the runner-up spot on the list. Merkel is the backbone of the 27-member European Union and carries the fate of the Euro on her shoulders; she’s shown her power through a hard-line austerity solution for  the European debt crisis.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (#25) is one of the youngest persons on the list, at age 29; he dropped significantly from last year’s top-ten ranking after Facebook’s much-anticipated IPO turned out to be a flop. Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff (#18) is one of the list’s biggest gainers: At the midpoint of her first term, Rousseff’s emphasis on entrepreneurship has prompted a slew of new startups and energized Brazilian youths.

Apple CEO  Tim Cook (#35) made a big upward move, too: A year after he succeeded iconic founder Steve Jobs, the company is the most valuable in the world. Apple stock hit an all-time high in September, reaching above $700 a share.

New members of the list include LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman (#71), the world’s most powerful venture capitalist and the most-connected man in Silicon Valley. Elon Musk (#66), the entrepreneur behind PayPal and Tesla Motors, is the most powerful man in space: His company SpaceX is a leader in the private space industry, and with that business set to boom, Musk stands to make out like a 19th-century railway tycoon.

A number of prominent people fell off the entirely. Last year’s #2, Chinese President Hu Jintao, is on his way out of office; he’s already handed over some of his duties, and will surrender the rest early next year. We  removed U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from the list for the same reasons: They’re both not expected to return to their powerful posts for Obama’s second term.
Any ranking of the world’s most powerful people is going to be subjective, so we don’t pretend ours is definitive. It’s meant to be the beginning of a conversation, not the final word. So tell us what you think: Is ex-president Bill Clinton (#50) really more powerful than the current Prime Minister of Russia (#61)? Does someone like the chief of the Internal Federation of Association Football (#69) belong on the list at all? Who did we miss? What did we get wrong? Join the conversation by commenting below.

Business News

'Acquisition is not a direct answer to growth'
Mergers and acquisitions have to be strategic: S D Shibulal
S.D. Shibulal, Infosys CEO Photo: Rachit Goswami
S.D. Shibulal, the last of the founders to lead Infosys, is under pressure to boost growth at the software giant. In an exclusive interview with Govindraj Ethiraj on the show Bottomline, airing on Headlines Today, the Infosys CEO spoke on issues ranging from the need for strategic acquisitions to his new vision, Infosys 3.0.

I notice that you have 1,51,151 employees at last count. How many of them are in Bangalore and how many outside?

Actually, our Bangalore population must be around 20,000 plus. But, please remember, we have 10 centres in India. Some of the centres are larger than Bangalore, like Hyderabad, Pune, Chennai are pretty large centres. Our onsite-offshore ratio is about 25%-27%. That means 25%-27 % of our population will be outside India.

Is this of the total population or of the bench?

You can exclude the bench for this computation but the onsite-offshore ratio is about 25% even if you include the bench. So you'd have around 30,000 people outside India. That will include people in the US, Europe, Australia, China, Japan. We also have large centres outside India. We have a centre in China with 3,500 people. We have a 1,000 people capacity in Philippines. We have a centre in Poland. We have a centre in Czech Republic. So we are truly global. We have people from various nationalities working for us.
You have been asked this many times why you do not want to acquire companies and you have said that the reason you cannot do that is because you cannot keep adding people and growing organically in the services business.

 Now can you translate that for us what does this mean and what does every additional employee bring to the table?

I think you are asking two questions and I need to segregate them. Number one: I really believe that our service business can really scale up… Because I have been asked this question when we were 10,000 people, 50,000 people, 100,000 people. I look at the Indian Railways, they have a million people. So please remember that Infosys is a platform we have built, a platform which is absolutely scalable. You come into the organisation you are operating on a scalable platform. In 1999, we were 99% in Bangalore, one centre…
That's when most of the founders used to talk about the infrastructure problems of Bangalore…
But today Bangalore is 19%. That means we have scaled up across the country. Now, we are scaling up into other countries. China is 3,500 people. So from the scalable perspective I don't see any limit with the platform. We can easily go to 250 people, 25,000 people, 400,000 people. That is one aspect. But the question is if that is the right thing to do. Will the talent supply support it? That is the question that needs to be asked. That is why we say we need to create a balanced portfolio of business which will actually make sure that our dependence on people actually comes down over a period of time.

So to what extent is growth of Infosys, when predicated to growth in North America or let us say the world, dependent on the Indian economy itself?

Again, two parts. From a talent supply point of view, India is a predominant piece. They are the largest supply of talent for us. Last year we recruited 45,000 people. This year we will recruit 35,000 people. India is going to produce a million plus engineers going forward. Now even if I assume that 40% of them are MNC ready, that is 400,000 people, so we have enough talent supply in India to support. That is one part of the business. The other part is the Indian business itself. Our revenue from India today is one per cent but, of course, we have entered India late. We have been present in the Indian market only over the last couple of years, other than Finacle. We have been in the Indian market with Finacle as a leader for many, many years. Other than Finacle, that business is starting to do very well. For instance, in India we announced the India Post deal, a Rs 800 crore banking deal with the postal service. It is a real transformational deal. So we are looking for deals of that nature in India and we are seeing very good traction but at this point in time India gives us approximately one per cent of our revenue.

There is volatility... I am not seeing any material change in the environment