India’s Construction Equipment Industry: Notes from EXCON 2023

EXCON 2023, Bengaluru Besides a fascination for super-sized construction equipment, my interest in this space is also due to its overlap with agricultural machinery. I spent a day exploring and learning a great deal about various types of construction equipment on display at EXCON 2023 in Bengaluru. Here are a few observations. Electric and hydrogen-fuel …

India’s farming and carbon credit market

Meet the farmer with whom India's farming enters carbon credit market (Livemint) profiles a farmer from Punjab with 65 acres of landholding. He grows rice using the direct-seeded rice (DSR) method. The method reduces labour cost because transplanting of saplings as well as puddling is not involved in DSR method. He is saving on irrigation …

The great squeeze: small companies in India

Rahul Yadav's outburst is a good thing in that sense, even thought some see it as a career suicide by a promising young entrepreneur. Rough and straight is necessary sometimes!

The Beautiful Fabric – Govt & Businesses

With waters getting polluted, small and big fishes are affected equally. Perhaps in proportion to their size. It appears quite similar in business as well, where a stifling, unsupportive and corrupt operating environment of a country affects its own potential as well the businesses operating in that country. Last week I wrote of how we …

Sri Lanka, India & Small Businesses

This has been a busy week with fieldwork, travel and working on our business. Last evening I caught up an aidworker friend, who is taking a break from the regular string of assignments by doing something different - consulting on projects which are easy in their pace and aren't quite critical as the ones he …

“Transformative” Use: Authors Guild vs Google

For those who have followed theAuthors Guild vs Google Inc case (which has been on for over 8 years now) would know that the court has ruled in favour of Google's book-scanning venture, ruling against the charge that this will deprive authors of their income from their books. The District Court judge used a rather interesting …

HBR’s pricing and access to knowledge

An interesting discussion is brewing on FT with a Rotman School academic - Prof Joshua Gans suggesting that FT should knock-off Harvard Business Review (HBR) from its research component in FT45 ranking of global MBA and EMBA programs. While he acknowledges the quality of papers from the journal, he is clear that the publication is …