new stock buy - sonata software

Entered a new stock - Sonata Software.

Reasons to buy

Market cap - 360crores ~ 85mn USD

strong promoters - Raheja group
strong U.S. presence
strong presence in the indian market
strong partnerships with tier 1 vendors - oracle, msft, mercury
CMM level 5 - prime candidate for a buyer
closely held by few large shareholder groups - promoters, management, ESOP making strategic moves easy.
just acquired a large european IT company - 50.1% making their numbers a part of the parent
good cash flow - quarterly profit of about 10 crores - 2.5mn USD or about 10mn USD a year excluding growth.

I'm up 50% on the rest of my portfolio from the past 6 months (excluding Astra Microwave which has not yet moved).

Lets see how Sonata contributes.

'Naukri, twice as big as Monsterindia'

A nice letter by Sanjeev who is the founder of Naukri.com proving quite conclusively that it's twice as big as Monster India. Good one.
Letter to Rediff

Interesting article on business 2.0

about Immigration. Read the full article here

My Fav. part

As most everyone who pays into Social Security knows, this country (and all others in the developed world) is facing a retirement crisis. It starts this year, as the oldest Baby Boomers - also dubbed the "pig-in-a-python" demographic - hit 60 and decide that playing a round of golf every day beats sitting in a 6 ft. by 6 ft. cube.

Faced with far more retirees than workers, we have two options: up the retirement age to keep workers slogging away until their 80th birthdays; or, let the world's youth do the work while paying our Social Security along the way. In return, we get to spend our golden years drinking Pina Coladas in Palm Beach. Which do you think we'll pick?

My fav. portion from the Premji interview in NYT

I think when you combine the line below with the fact that the need for engineers is bound to grow both from product development as well as from technical support due to technology's prevalence in our day to day life and the expansion of the market across the globe, the shortfall then sinks in.

Of course, I still feel what we have to improve is the quality of engineers in India as that is still way below that of those being produced in the United States.

Excerpted

The important thing about outsourcing or global sourcing is that it becomes a very powerful tool to leverage talent, improve productivity and reduce work cycles. The West is not producing enough engineers. The United States will produce 75,000 engineers this year; they will produce more sports therapists than engineers. Germany, the great engineering power of Europe, will produce 35,000 engineers this year; they will produce more architects than engineers. Western companies want access to Indian talent, that is why they outsource, that is why they come to India to set up base.

Good Day it is

Two good articles out today

A Nice Interview of Azim Premji by the NYT
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/16/business/16interview.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

A good Article by Guy Kawasaki on the new 'Art of Distribution'
http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/09/the_art_of_dist_1.html

Both must-reads

Stock Picks and Results

Stocks I hold

ORG Informatics - Telecom SI - average buy price 78
Geometric Software - CAD CAM Specialist - average buy price 81
AStra Microwave - Telecom and Defense products - Average buy 166

any opinions out there?

An important lesson learnt late - but learnt after all

Dell has been in the news for reducing their Indian call center ops and customer satisfaction woes. From my own days in the call center world I learnt one lesson well - Call center managers focus on statistics. what they miss out on in the midst of AHT, AWT, CPC and other quality parameters is the fundamentals of business- ensuring the customers problem is solved. Dell has summed it up well in his interview to Fortune

From Michael Dell
We were doing some things that were just plain wrong. Last year we had parts of our company where we would say, "Hey, let's handle the calls faster." The problem is that if you handle the call faster, you solve 90% of the problem instead of 100%. So the guy calls back. And you've just pissed him off more, and you haven't accomplished a damn thing.

This year we said we're not going to measure how long we're on the phone, we're going to measure how well we did solving the problem. What happened in the second quarter was we had two million fewer calls than we had planned. The average hold time before we answered the call was cut by more than 50%, and the satisfaction rate went up quite dramatically--like seven or eight points--in just a couple of weeks.

The team was managing cost instead of managing service and quality. It's totally the wrong answer. Stop managing for cost. Manage for a great experience.

Cheers,

Poet, Lover, Birdwatcher - Nissim Ezekiel

To force the pace and never to be still
Is not the way of those who study birds
Or women. The best poets wait for words.
The hunt is not an exercise of will
But patient love relaxing on a hill
To note the movement of a timid wing;
Until the one who knows that she is loved
No longer waits but risks surrendering -
In this the poet finds his moral proved
Who never spoke before his spirit moved.

Poetry - Pablo Neruda - Part 1

And it was at that age...Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no, they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.

to buy or not to buy?

Apple Computers annouced a refresh of their iPod lineup yesterday.. of course right in time for the holiday season and yet before people have decided on their present lists. I've been one of the last people to buy an ipod and now it's time to bite the dust.

What will I buy?

hmm... Will It be the really cool video iPOD ? or then maybe the really sexy shuffle?

or hmm..maybe the voice of reason and the 8GB killer nano. Stay tuned and do give me your suggestions.