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"The pessimism of our
age," wrote Bertrand Russel in 1932, "is generally explained as being due to the
bad state of the world, but I believe it is quite as much due to boredom which we all
endured in youth through the optimism of the Victorians."
How true! How aptly it fits us!
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Just time-travel a bit. The
feeling of frustration and pessimism prevalent in the Indian telecom today can be
explained as being due to the actual situation—Sukhram factor, coalition governments,
and the Jagmohan factor. But it is quite as much due to the unrealistic expectations from
the Indian market, derived from the now legendary "middle class" myth.
Interestingly, the foreign investors who are making all sorts of complaints now had a
significant role in championing, if not postulating this theory.
Lot has happened since then to
bring us back to reality. But unfortunately, as a nation, we are not mature enough to
realise the reality—be it cricket or business. We have too many premature
celebrations. And we have too many prolonged mournings. Ironically, we never forget to
take credit for being the people from the land of Bhagavad Gita, which in so many words
teaches us to act, and think, just the opposite.
One such mourning is still
continuing. Many, not most, and I emphasise that, in the industry still love to discuss
what they term "recession". A section of the media, ever on the lookout for
"negative" stories, amplifies these views to project a situation of the market
that
affects not only the business morale, but also the actual performance. Targets are not
met. Blame it on the recession. The term is so convenient to most of us.
Recession is in our mind. The
situation in the market is different. How do you explain a 62 percent growth in the
networking products market? How do you explain so many companies registering
significant—in many cases impressive—growths in turnover and profits? Many will
argue enterprise networking is a different market, not getting too affected by the policy
hiccups. Agreed. But how do you explain a more than hundred percent growth for a company
like HFCL, which many had almost written off? And how do you explain more than five
hundred percent growth by Fibcom? These companies operate in the traditional telecom
market. Don’t they?
The bottomline is clear. A lot of
business was done last year. Across almost all segments. While enterprises invested on
technology, so did carriers.
Networking vendors do not have
the time to discuss issues and problems. They are too occupied with the business. Talk to
them about their business and they will tell you who placed the orders, worth how much,
and when. Go a step further, you will find these "whos" and how
"muchs" vary. Orders have flown from the telcos and ISPs, from corporate users
and software developers, from educational institutions and…yes, the Government.
Or rather the governments. The
state governments have become more sensitised to the utility of technology. And that is a
very positive development. They are more stable than the centre and do not have
conflicting interests and ideologies within a single government. The implementation is
faster. And that means business for the industry. Whether it is the backbone building in
Andhra Pradesh or automating driving licences through smart cards in Gujarat, they are big
business.
However, the segment which almost
"revived" the industry was the ISPs. Right from small, neighbourhood category C
providers to MTNL. Orders flowed in large quantities. Nortel Networks, a company that has
done hardly any business in the first two quarters, garnered a growth of 135 percent over
last year, mostly in just last two quarters. This year, this market will continue to give
major business and also see lot of competition with almost all-traditional telco equipment
vendors entering the race.
The summary—it is business
once again. You have a choice. You can either keep on discussing the issues and problems
or can do business. Nothing like if you can do both, but very few manage to do that.
Actions speak louder than words.
In business, numbers do speak louder than actions.