China's Stock xchange for SME sector

China will have a stock exchange dedicated only to SME sector from October 23rd 2009. This speaks of China's dedication to provide boost to the infrastructure and growth of its economy and government's support to industries. We always try to compare India with China or India taking over China, but are we anywhere near to it ? If India is to compete with China in terms of growth, our SME sector will necessarily have to become more robust and competitive.

Source: Doing Business Report 2010

Where China is doing everything to boost the industries, we have not done anything as evident from the stats.

 Though India is only next to China in tems of FDI Confidence but it is way behind in terms of 'Ease of Doing Business'. 

So for India to grow and compete with China, it has to overcome these bottlenecks and think ahead of China and provide boost to its industries by providing quick accesibility to funds and reducing clearnace time.

Careers in banking- A lot has changed after the financial turmoil of 2008, the careers that were highly venerated until the behemoth banks collapsed, have in today’s world lost their sheen. Careers related to investment banking, especially in the western world are looked at with mistrust. Asset managers, merchant bankers and investment bankers have the onerous task of rebuilding the lost confidence. They shall steer the world out of the gloom. A career opportunity fraught with nerve racking and number crunching hurdles and one with plenty of scope for learning and displaying your financial prowess.

New business opportunities

Labeled as the fuel for the growth of the world economy India forges ahead with a determined resolve to entrench itself as a super power in the world. This is made possible as India’s growth is underpinned by strong financial growth. As we expand and burgeon, so does the basket of opportunities in different sectors. Each business that flourishes opens up a lot more options and opportunities for other businesses. It is just that we need to tap these new growth potentials to open up more gates of opportunities and prosperity. The entrepreneurial skills of Indians have been appreciated the world over, in fact, to quote Mr. Jeff Immelt “The CEOs in India are as good as or better than any in the world”. Mr Immelt also placed the Indian ceos and entrepreneurs ahead of the Japanese.
What opportunities exist in India? How can we tap them? Is there a systematic approach that can be adopted to bolster entrepreneurial skills?

No surprise No shock

 As I had previously predicted and conjectured in one of the blogs, the Bharti-MTN deal collapsed. This does not come as a surprise at all. In fact if you ask me, this was something that was imminent. The Indian telecom czar had got his hopes high and had exercised all his strength to make the deal a success. Mr. Mittal’s meeting the prime minister thrice that week, prior to the deal was certainly not over anything modest. But as it is often said, not all is under one’s control and as destiny would have it the deal failed. The dilly dallying by MTN portended the doom and the shelving was a signal from the South African entities to say “Naah we are not interested anymore”. Whatever it involved, it sure is a lost growth opportunity at least for some time for the telecom major. Mr. Mittal had tried all that was possible to establish a transnational telecom company and to entrench AIRTEL as a world class company straddling different continents. Leading newspapers seemed to console Mr. Mittal with quotes from head honchos of different industries.

However there are a few things that Mr. Mittal can make best use of out of the failed deal. In the first place Airtel can focus all its energy on the expansion onto 3G space in India without stretching its finances. Airtel is economically and functionally empowered for bigger battles and can even look out for other deals that are not as demanding. Bharti is free to explore the nook and crannies that were unexplored till date, it can certainly ensconce its position in India by meeting domestic demands. As we say, every cloud has a silver lining; this failed deal has quite a few. Unlike other sympathizers, we won’t sing sweet and consoling rhymes for Mr. Mittal but would rather expect Mr. Mittal to marshal his formidable clout and forge ahead taking india’s telecom sector to new heights in a new direction.