Tuesday, October 18, 2016

Visit to India - Careful with what you eat or drink. Your stomach may not able to handle it.

Visit to India - Careful with what you eat or drink. Your stomach may not able to handle it.
Yes, I was warned to be careful with what I eat or drink there.
We were looking for halal food and we could not find any halal sign in any restaurant there. However we still survive because the Vegetarian restaurants are every where. After a while we were craving for meat. Cannot tahan makan Vegetable everyday.
At last we found one muslim sounded restaurant. Ask the person in front and he said Yes halal. In ordered my beriani and Zul ordered Masala. It was so hot ( curry hot).
That night Zul was vomiting and having dierrhea. I was also have to go to toilet everyhour. Zul was having headache and continue the next day. The dierrhea continues the next day. We have meeting that day thinking the problem will go away.  It continues and gets worse.
The next midnight night we could not stand it anymore. At midnight we ask the hotel for doctor and were told the clinics were not open, until 10:00am next day. No private hospital. The government hospital is 30 minutes by car. We decided to stay in the hotel. Another night of going to toilet. I was having dehydration.
The next day we search for doctor. Was told somewhere not too far in Rajiv Chowk. Got the tuk tuk and search for clinic that we imagine like in Malaysia. No such thing. One guy told us to go to a shoes shop, at the back, on top of small stairs. One small room. One man, one table. No nurse. no medicine rack. No clinic signboard like in Malaysia.  I looked at Zul, and he looked at me. We got our from that room fast.
No doctor or clinic. Now we search for pharmacy. At last found one in another block. Told him about our dierrhea and vomiting. No problem. he gave us the medicine. Eat the medicine and that night I can sleep well. Diarrhea solved.

My message to you all is be careful with what you eat there. Your stomach may not be able to handle it.
  

My Business Trip to New Delhi - Is India a high potential country to expand your business?

My Business Trip to New Delhi - Is India a high potential country to expand your business?.
I have been to India a few times before, but this is the first time I came to explore about business.
This was what everybody told me about India:
1. It is a large country.
2. Large Population. About 1.26 billions
3. Very strong in IT. Many programmers. Many large ICT companies.
4. It is a BRIC country.
5. Many Malaysian ICT company failed to penetrate India. 
6. Every Indian is very good in English.

This is what I learned:
1. Yes it is a large country. Population is large. Many cities with millions of populations. New Delhi is about 20 millions. Other cities are Mumbay,Chennai, Pune etc are also big.
2. The people in the north speaks Hindi. The people in south speaks Tamil. Those guys in the north do not know how to speak Tamil. The guys in the south do not speak Hindi.
3. To solve the problem, the government make all forms in English.
4.  I tried to speak to a number of graduates, and found that their command of english is poor. Almost like many Malay graduates from local Universities here on their command of english.
5. Yes they have many large ICT companies. But they have very few their own products. They are positioned as system integrators and outsourcing companies.
6. How to penetrate the market?. It will take time and patience.

About our competitors:
1. The no.1 competitor is Tally Software. They have 650 staff.
2. Thy have about 1.0 million paying users.
3. There are about 48 million SMEs in India. Why so much different?
4. Some research shows that probably 10X of the numbers are using pirated version.
5. The software is the PC based system. Sold in CD or download.  It is almost like the UBS in Malaysia. Using old User Interface like 20 years ago.
6. There are a few cloud based system like OfficeCentral coming up. OfficeCentral need to compete with them.
7. The large ICT companies like Wipro, Satym, TCS are not our competitors. They normally implement SAP, Oracle and large custom solution. They do not have similar product like OfficeCentral.

Can we buld up successful business there?
1. Yes.
2. Competitors are like Malaysia, using old PC based tehnology. They focus on accounting, inventory and payroll. No CRM.
3. Face to face marketing is necessary. Relationship is important.
4. We will do extensive workshop and seminar on cloud technology and Accounting, Payroll and Sales Management using OfficeCentral.
5. Focus on training of new staff. Staff should be young and cloud is something part of their life. Easy to train.
6. Which city? Probably New Delhi or Chennai. Chennai is nearer to Malaysia.