So, lets assume that you are a ‘successful’ Mumbai Road Contractor:
These are some of your Entrepreneur traits
POSITIVES
– Power of Relationship building
Not everyone gets to be able to influence multi million $$$ contracts their way. You have something in you that brings such large deals your side.
– Ability to service Relationships
Everyone gets lucky with a couple of orders. If you are able to get business repeatedly over the years, that means that you really know how to service your client and extract repeat business from them, despite the intense competition to oust you out.
– Understanding chains of decision making and working them.
Given that building roads is a completely corrupt business practice in Mumbai, its not EASY to keep everyone involved happy. Politicians get greedier & new decision makers pop out from here and there. If you repeatedly get business, you really know how to work the chain of command from the top to the bottom and you prevent getting sidelined over for new contractors etc. You know whom to please and how.
– Making Profits
It may SEEM easy to be intensely profitable in a corrupt business, but that really NOT always TRUE. Since everyone knows your modus operandi and margins, demands keep soaring – kick backs increase and also there is a bigger and growing demand from the corrupt ‘eco-system’ that tries to feast on you (Say in the Mumbai roads business, besides politicians you will ‘directly’ bribe, the folks from service tax, income tax etc get more aggressive and hence need special tackling). Despite all these demands, if you can make money each year, you really know HOW to do business.
– Keep stress under control
I mean you really know how to take it easy in your head! Just living with the fact that you can get raided, sealed, arrested or just black listed any time – any day and YET to continue to stomp on, requires LOTS OF GUTS and pure entrepreneurial courage!
NEGATIVES
– You think Small
The reason you build bad roads is that they get damaged and hence give you repeat business. Thats such MYOPIC thinking! I mean if you build great roads and got a stamp of approval for the work you do, then you could be the next Hindustan Construction Company (the guys who build the Sea Link) and be listed in the stock markets and be building roads and bridges and dams and flyovers ALL OVER the country and even in different parts of the world! Your Company can be worth billions of dollars – and not what was left behind after everyone ate what was on your table.
– You hang out with the wrong Company
If you do business with corrupt people, and eat, drink and party with them – then you are ruining your entrepreneurial energy.
Bad people restrict your thinking and dont let you soar. They don’t let you IMAGINE or dream or speculate on what could be – coz you are just concerned with what is easily available.
– Your sense of Morals are f***** up.
If you can make people suffer daily and ruin their health and country’s productivity, then your sense of Morals are not in place. If not set right fast, the big REAL WORLD of commerce and trade will reject you. In a few years you will realize that you cant THINK CLEAN – and that’s why you cant GROW BIG.
So decide what would you rather build:
****
Maybe you aren’t building Mumbai Roads,
but if you are doing anything similar – chuck it and think BIGGER!
nilesh partani
ok alok,agreed! but you would appreciate the fact that even hcc has got comapny of mr.pawar for bagging huge contracts!
so,nothing goes bigger in this country without politicians company(leaving some exceptions)
nishant bhojwani
Alok, it is such a sad state of affairs. The muncipal corporation should change there name to the MUNCIPAL CORPORATION OF CRATER MUMBAI.
ashish vyas
Brilliant marketing perspective u hav brought to the entire issue- of potholes. love ur stuff..ur always enlightening the world..keep it up alok, till ur in par-lok.
cheers n jai hind
Aditya Babbar
Alok, you touched a raw nerve. The infrastructure woes and how the ‘contractors and engineers’ think, is frankly appalling. This is like a leaf out of the Akshay Kumar movie, where he is a Road Contractor.
Entrepreneur Mentality on one side, How about this realisation that you as an entrepreneur/businessman/firm is building something for CUSTOMER consumption. The more the customer uses it/consumes it, the better Visibility YOU have and much greater chances to making Good Clean Profit.
Prime Example – Infrastructure ! (And I think you rightly said hanging out in Bad Company makes all the difference). Mumbai as a City has been announcing that it would ape itself to be Shanghai … I don’t see no initiatives in terms of Infrastructure on this regard. Or maybe its too cumbersome since the Rot has already hit the Bureaucracy and Government. From a company perspective, the Miscellaneous expenses account for a shit load on the project cost.
Better Quality Metal Roads and Road network, Public Transport, Airports and Telecom is where it will be won or lost. Its that simple, the country which has the Brain Power but not the right infrastructure .. Cannot be a Winner.
I read somewhere that the every Billion spent on Infrastructure, adds a 100 basis points to the GDP of the State/Country. Case in point – Gujarat, Haryana, Bihar, Rajasthan, etc. Good roads, Good connectivity leading to some great GDP numbers for the State.
With regards to your comment of You think Small. I couldn’t agree with you more. Same thought was echoed by Mr Kishore Biyani at one of the TiE summit’s early this year. We are so busy concentrating on Myopic gains, that we sorta have lost the Bigger Picture. The people who did not are still revered. Eg – Shapoorji Pallonji and their Bombay-Pune Expressway. They bid Projects across the world and do a damn good job of it. And oh yes … they are Clean. So its not like it cannot be done, we Choose to take the easier route towards Money.
One word acronym which would make this all work – PPP – Public Private Partnership. There in lies the answer, I believe.
I do hope Bombay is resuscitated very soon, else we will see it all crumble.
Aditya Babbar
On a sidenote, why don’t you take lectures on behalf of the BMC for all their Contractors.
It’d be eloquent, succinct, and you’d make sure you hit ’em in the solar plexes(as it were) to give them a Perspective and hopefully instill a sense of Value-Add and Customer Service Orientation.
I read one of Neil Bahal’s posts, and he was considering starting an venture which trains people in Customer Service Orientation. Your first client BMC !
Amit Gupta
Last two pictures sums up everything. Amazing article.
Ashwin C Parulkar
Iam here in US for 4 month and just recently had a bus journey to Nayegra from New York via Pennsilvenia and had great interestate highways 81,86,90 fabulous roads not a single pot hole, and was just comparing with India saw the snap up and ifelt disgusted sad and disappinted ,
I felt hardly any fatigue on a 1400km journey imagine the same distance in India how much time I would have taken ,instead 16 hr.