My Bonding with an Airline

How often do you feel an airline brand close to your heart that you do not wish to see any other beyond it? Especially in India, which is a price sensitive market despite a significant proportion of travellers travelling on company's money. And how often do you find your favourite airline providing you the best of deals when you need the most, when you wish to think like the second Indian customer?

Being a student in a college situated some 2000 kilometres away, journey by rail was not always the feasible option, especially when time was the limiting factor. And with the entry of newer players in the aviation industry like Indigo, Go Air, a price war erupted to benefit a lot of customers like us. Of course, things have changed now a bit, but back then, well, we were overjoyed. My first journey above the clouds was with SpiceJet from New Delhi to Guwahati. Too excited about the prospect of travelling in an air plane for the first time in my life, we reached the airport some 4 hours early. Part of the fact that our train's arrival time connecting Surat to Delhi was 6 hours ahead of the departure time of the flight. And since we had no plans for Delhi, we had no other option but to head straight to the airport. Had we had faith on the Delhi traffic, we may have made some plans, but well, we were scared. Never been inside an airport, I was awestruck by the aura of the place. And the moment you step inside, you get a "rich" feeling within you, even though you came in an auto after bargaining for 15 minutes. The food inside makes you feel hungry, but the price tags say "Home is only 2 and a half hours away". 

There is a common belief that when stars come together, everything else falls into place. In my case, the timings came together when it was time to leave home for college. The arrival time of the flight into Mumbai was so well knit with the departure time of the train from Mumbai that the combo was simply irresistible. And which was the airline to provide me that; well, JetLite it was. And the bonding so formed during my flight back to college after the first holidays had still continued. Sadly, the airline was recently rechristened as JetKonnect by its parent company Jet Airways.

The journey since then has been quite a good one and I have loved the simplicity and sincerity of the in flight as well as ground staff. There had never been any situation that needed any particular attention, so can not comment on their versatility at this point, but I'm sure they would have been as sincere as we would have wanted them to. Well, that's all for today. I have quite a many years to live more, and that means many more flight journeys. Hope to see me on board soon. Au revoir!

The Real Big Thing

"Give a fish to a person, you'll feed him for a day; Teach him how to fish, you'll feed him for a lifetime" - Often said, seldom implemented. Time and again we hear of wealthy philanthropists donating a significant portion of their savings (not income) to the less deserving ones. Such news are pleasant to read and rejoice. But the point to be pondered here is whether this is a better way to try to make the world a better place? Because as far as my little experience of 24 years goes, I do not see results from these short term "wellness" bear any fruit in the overall lives of the target people.

Consider another real life example. Floods are a yearly phenomenon in our country. The only steps that I see the public machinery taking in such situations are setting up relief camps, arranging for political visits from the air, distributing bags of food and the likes. What I never see (or maybe fail to see) is any concrete effort to keep out the cause itself; through measures like building of concrete banks, increasing their height in areas that are most affected, removal of silt etc.

My idea for the future stems from only one point - Long Term. As contrary to common beliefs that long term is a misnomer in business scenarios of the current era of evolving and rapidly changing market conditions, my belief and analysis rides on the hypothesis that the real big thing is to think "long term". And I propose to introduce two sectors that require attention for the progress and shining of businesses in the future, especially in the Indian context - Education and Supply Chain.

The President of the Republic of India has mentioned that "Education is the true alchemy that can bring India its next golden age. Our motto is unambiguous: All for knowledge, and knowledge for all." Thinking on similar lines, education is the next big thing that will drive India's growth. And when education is being talked about, it doesn't necessarily mean higher education in the form of abundance of Master degree holders or Ph.D holders. India will need an additional supply of educated labourers in the services industry in the years to come. There is a greater need to train people who may not be able to get into the conventional education system of 10+2+3/4 in lines of work that can guarantee them of something they can make a living out of. For eg. - vocational training to enable them to speak in English (something is better than nothing), teaching them accounts so that they may find jobs as clerks in small or mid level offices, teaching them to use computers which will enable them to be employed in a variety of verticals. This form of trainings are existent no doubt,  but the stress should be on more. The labour force in India is highly skewed towards agriculture, which does not need those extra hands. A better strategy from the Indian perspective will be to churn out a portion from the agricultural sector and make them capable of employment in the services sector. What is in it for big corporations and MNCs? Well, education is highly profitable if you know how to do it right. Investment is not on the extreme side, and benefits are continuous. This is why we reckon - Think Long Term.

When we talk of the term "Supply Chain", the most obvious answer that comes to our mind is that it has something to do with manufacturing. Supply chain encompasses almost every known form of business that exist today. Right from  agriculture to manufacturing to services. And according to recent statistics, India loses $65 billion every year due to inefficient supply chain systems. This is a very big number and is usually not visible because of the field's unattractiveness. Supply chain in IT is currently moving away from hardware to software with technological advancements, with cloud computing being one example. Manufacturing and distribution has become more complex than ever before. Increase in agricultural production is not directly replicated to increase in consumption due to inefficient distribution. These are the factors that need immediate and long term attention. Of course, it is specific to the industry type, but efficient systems in place in any industry will go a long way in cost and waste reduction and delivery of better products and solutions across domains. The chunk of the pie yet to be tasted is a big opportunity for private players. The benefits will not be visible in one or two years, and nor should a plan be devised with that thought in mind.

Repeating the same mantra again, thinking long term would be the key to a sustainable and cost effective system, that can improve the fortunes of many a players while making the life of the people they serve better.