Can there be a Indian Steve Jobs??

             It’s been not so long that Steve Job had left the world and honestly I would say as a student I never knew who Steve job was till his stepping down from the Apple and his dead last Oct 5, 2011. Hearing of him I was so engross to know about him. This was When My mind struck me with a Question “Why there is no Indian Steve Jobs?” comparing him I came across our home product HCL InfoTech (Hindustan Computer Limited) India’s oldest computer company.

In 1976 Ajay Chowdhry and his colleague started a computer company. Hindustan Computers Limited, as it was then known, by 1978 they managed to ship its first home designed, home- built micro computer . Around the same time  a Syrian-American college drop-out called Steve Jobs had shipped his first microcomputer — the Macintosh.

This was the predecessor of the PC. But IBM was to lay claim to that term, and make it its own, Three years later, HCL roll out its first desktop PC.  And of course IBM took a route to becoming the world's largest technology company. And Jobs took Apple on a different journey altogether, making it arguably the world's most inventive technology company, and eventually the world's most valuable one.

 Thirty six years ago, all three companies were virtually at the same point in the industry's lifecycle. Apple and HCL, in fact, were so similar, they could have been twins. Jobs started Apple in a garage and Ajay Chowdhry and his friends started their company in a south Delhi ' barsati'. Apple took an off- the- shelf microprocessor and built a computer around it. And then developed the software to make it run. HCL took an off- the- shelf microprocessor and built a computer around it. And then wrote the software to make it run virtually at the same time.

Four decades later, the picture has changed dramatically. Today, HCL is among the top five players in the country and has revenues of $6 in all the sectors that it operates in. But  Apple recorded net sales (in 2010) of over $ 65 billion. In the stock market, at $ 350 billion, Apple is nearly a hundred times more valuable than HCL. It is not just the top player in its segments in the US — it is the top player in the world.

What happened? Why did HCL get left behind, while Apple managed to surge ahead unstoppably? Was the founders of HCL weren’t as genius as job. No! HCL too was a powerhouse of invention. Not only did HCL develop a microcomputer at the same time as Apple or a desktop PC three years ahead of IBM.  HCL developed a working UNIX computer years ahead of Sun and its own relational database management system ( RDBMS) ahead of Oracle in 1981.

 The key element which made the difference and the reason why HCL's growth was stunted was that

 HCL was an Indian company, working in Indian conditions.

The others were all American. And the ecosystem available to HCL and its American counterparts was incomparably different.

 In 1977, George Fernandes' quirky nationalism drove IBM out of India, opening the doors for HCL. But over the next 13 years before reforms started, government regulations and the licence permit Raj ensured that HCL was left comprehensively behind. It could not make enough computers to meet demand, because it didn't have the licence to produce the extra number.

When it got the licence, it could not import the components needed, because foreign exchange was short and you needed a separate permit for precious foreign exchange. It could not move into other markets abroad because that was controlled too. And so on.

HCL can justifiably blame the lack of reforms for its lack of growth. But for hundreds of thousands of would- be inventors and entrepreneurs, there are still as many and equally insuperable hurdles, in their way.

From a potter’s son from Gujarat whose ' rural fridge' wins him global awards and recognition to  a Kerala inventor reduced to sending emails to journalists about his heat exchanger which does the work of an AC at a hundredth the cost and the recently Face-book recruit of an Indian student we can at least dream of a Indian Steve Job but nothing is done for ionising the talents, the lack of an ecosystem which encourages and supports innovation and enterprise is killing off the vision of thousands of Indian Steve Jobs before they can be turned to reality.

What if Jobs had decided to stay in India after his 1974 visit? What if he had started Apple in India, not the US? Could a college drop- out have managed to get the funding to start a company? Would anybody have taken the technology developed by a non- graduate seriously? The answer is obvious. It is not just enough to be inventive or even entrepreneurial if there is no viable ecosystem which encourages new ideas, and rewards the intellectual innovation, we would never be able to see a Indian Steve Job.

Two decades down the reforms road, we have still not learned this lesson.

Arunachal Pradesh plundered by its own

Dear political Sirs,
I hope you are all wealthy and healthy to slug it out your elections. However, of equal importance is the fitness of the state where you and I live. Sadly it had been deteroiting like the nosedive of the Helicopter that took our Chief Minister a few moons ago.
Sirs, My good name is Common Son, and I’m a student. I have got this letter from my teacher who said that all the top political leaders were public school educated and thus speak English. So I write not in the language of a common man fearing it might not be understood.
Sirs, my only plea is to give my generation a chance. I have completed my +2 this year and I have joined a good engineering college hoping to give relief to my poor parents: the land back which they sold it for my studies and I know many of my friend whose parents are not able to sent any pocket money to their sons who stays at the other end of the country far from our home.
Out of many, most of my friends have decided to stay back at home. To have some alternatives of making easy money so that their younger ones could go to studies. No problem with that.
I too can be contractor if my job has been bought by your kid and kins. But my worry is when I came back to my home after four day journey having not eaten anything only with those railways stations water taps. I saw my village friends with a quarter of Whisky. When I asked him from he bought it, he told me from a liquor vend in the village itself. Sir My teacher use to tell me that I should be happy that Arunachal is becoming like California. He says there bars in all villages in the west so why not in Arunachal? Yes he also updated with the concept of neighbourhood bars of London, and I am proud to say we are matching peg by peg. Our towns have equal number of bars or even more than the bookstalls.
Sirs, I believe liquor follow through a steel chain to a bed and folks drink as much as they can during your Campaign. Sir I understand your problem the poor uneducated villagers and the youth supports the person who supplies more whiskies and the notes. But please take it that you have made it a way to lure.
Sir, I applaud then very sharp and honest work of some police officers especially for making the List of the PDS scammers, but perhaps your invesgating agent or your babus have filled their belly. Perhaps you should ask your babus to calculate the cumulative loss the state is occurring through your fight for power. Sirs I would like to enquire you Am I really going to be a man with magnificent buildings, luxuries cars or a crorepatty with the salaries as a junior engineer, Assistant Engineer, or Executive engineer in any department of Arunachal Pradesh.?! Because I have seen contrary in this part of country. I guess I must have some important criteria to join that service.
Dear Sirs, Can you help my parents earn so that I can have a pocket money and enjoy my journey at least in the train. But then you’ve clubbed my parents as a small farmer, a shopkeeper, a good for nothing villager. Remember Sirs during election you pleaded them and now they plead you. Never have you realised that I have a heart of a son too. Nothing is more important to me than the happiness of my parents. But you care not.
Sirs As I write. Surrounding me is a group of my friends and each one has different dreams. Someone wants to entrepreneur, computer engineers, artist, APCS officers etc. We ask each other “Will We be able to chase our dreams on today’s Arunachal? In other words, Will the Arunachal brand of politics that backs only the prawns ever back its creative wealth?? It better we learn kabaddi.
Sirs, I don’t care if you wear long or brief underwear; or if your car is Scorpio or the SX4; or you have amassed much money to drive and mislead the youths. But if you don’t stop the ruin. History will force to write – ‘When Arunachal Pradesh was plundered by its own’.
Thanking you
You’re sincerely
Common son.