Tech Mahindra + Satyam : A tale of two...

As most people (atleast the IT folks in India) would know by now, Tech Mahindra has won the bid for Satyam. While, the current debate on valuation is expected to continue for a while, I thought, I'd just pen my own SWOT from a Tech Mahindra perspective.

Given that I own a few shares of Tech Mahindra (although NEVER did for Satyam), this may be seen as the "informed" view of an industry outsider ?

Strengths (read Advantages)
- TM has traditionally been in the telecom vertical and is perceived as a "vertical industry" player. This has meant that for a while, TM has been missing out on the broad "general business" areas of Retail, distribution, manufacturing, services etc. This would add considerable breadth
- Satyam supposedly has a fairly strong "fixed price" model (profitability unknown :-)) that should be good for TM
- Satyam's reach in both the middle east and AUS / NZ markets

Weakness (read Disadvantage)
- Management /Thought leadership : Especially in the areas of Packaged applications (SAP, Oracle, MS Dynamics), Custom development (non-product) and managed services
- Culture : Not sure how they'd be able to reconcile the bottom load model of Satyam at cheaper rates to the vertical strength model that TM has
- Parity : This just has to do with employee status and relationship management ?

Opportunity
- The biggest opportunity for TM would be the opening of the horizontal "multinational" enterprise - ranging from Travel industry to retail to pharma/healthcare
- The opening of the COTS (read as ERP/ CRM) market

Threat
- Client / customer and account retention (and this one needs no elaboration)
- Cost advantage ? (esp. given that most of the contracts that Satyam needs to deliver on would be on a very aggressive P&L) and the market perception / environment

However, what is very clear is that this is probably the start of a clear sign of consolidation.

Electricity conservation : Smart Metering with Smart pricing ?

Today, I saw another article on smart metering in ET's online edition that prompts me to write out this post.

For most people in Bangalore, power cuts are a routine thing. Infact, a telling and poignant photo in the local newspapers a couple of weeks ago had school children protesting that the power cuts were impacting their studies / exam results !

On their part, the government is trying to "buy" power from neighboring states to make up the deficit. This, when, the power dept is running under deficit and is owed millions by other government departments themselves ! Anyway, that is a digression.

Coming to governance, I think the best way to regulate power usage is to come up with a time based power tariff. Reasoning is simple, we Indians love to save money and if it means we have to switch on our "boilers" / "storage water heaters" in the middle of the night - we will. There just has to be an incentive.

Some of you may remember that the explosion of telecom (not the current mobile one, but, the earlier STD / landline one) owed a lot to the then prevalent incentive ie. ALL calls made between 10 PM in the night to 6 AM in the morning would be at 50% discount.

I still remember the long queue that would develop at some phone booths 15 mins or sometimes even 30 mins before the 10 PM deadline.

We would still need to upgrade our meters by making it time aware. All I'm stating is that it is NOT necessary to make the meters internet / online, but, it is sufficient for us to be able to get the meter to count at different rates based on time. Maybe we can pass that information on the grid itself so that the meters reconfigure on their own based on demand ?

Another idea to work on in my free time (when it happens!)

The much talked about Spirit of Mumbai or Why do I like Mumbai ?

For a lot of parents who worry about their child going out of town for their job, my suggestion of " let the individual start their career with a job in Mumbai - it is the best thing that that can happen" raises a lot of eyebrows. There is however a reason for this. Infact, I was reminded of all these reasons encapsulated as the spirit of Mumbai last week when I was talking to a colleague that has prompted this post.

The first thing that Mumbai teaches is "value of money". Purists will argue that we should focus on the word "value", we should replace the word "of" with "for" etc. but, Mumbai actually, I believe teaches one the value "of" money.

This is clearly demonstrated by the concept of "Shared autos and Shared cabs". Brilliant !!
It is a pleasure to walk up to any of the shared cab areas outside a train station to get into a shared cab where you get to talk to and interact with strangers. The best thing in the model is that it is a perfect example of "win-win" positioning. The individual rider wins by having to pay less, the cab driver wins by collecting slightly more than a straight "share".

Then, there is the Equality of money that the local 1st class bogie teaches. I'm actually NOT being demeaning by marking the term 1st class !!!. While I do recognize that there is a daily struggle and the bulk of the people move in the local's second class bogies, there is something magical about the 1st class bogie and that is "Aspirations"

If you sit in one of these morning / evening commuter bogies, you will get to see people from all classes of the "working hierarchy" rub shoulders. There will be the senior managers in a public sector / a bank to the rank newbie (still wet / green behind the ears) working as a trainee in an MNC. ALL of them are very open and discuss their career aspirations and hopes candidly using the co-commuter as a bouncing board. It is simply amazing !

After you spend a few months in Mumbai, you get to appreciate the term "Jugaad". In Mumbai, people learn the "yes" attitude and it grows on you. While the same attitude almost borders on "chalta hai" in other northern cities, I believe Mumbai has always had a "Can Do" set that is quite distinctive.

These 3 examples / attitudes of Jugaad, Save while you can and hold high aspirations make Mumbai an unique experience.

Let me repeat, if you ever get a chance to spend a few months working in Mumbai - irrespective of all the other troubles / issues - please do grab it !

Emirates Terminal 3 in Dubai - being in the belly of a snake ?

Most of my transits in Dubai terminal 3 ever since it opened have been in the night where I've not had a chance to see it in its' full glory until this trip.

This time, I had a distinct feeling that I was getting into the belly of a giant desert SNAKE !

You see, the design (see above) has the distinct pattern of a desert Snake. Once you walk in, you need to traverse for a looong loonng time across the belly of this snake to get to immigration.

The planes on either side almost seem to be the equivalents of small ants / insects coming in to take a dig at this dead snake !

I think in this case, there was an attempt to force fit into the design as I see a clear issue with the loading of passenger traffic. All focus is on the center or this belly where the lounges + the shopping area is. This means the extremes of this snake has a LOT of free space with a vauge emptiness to it, while the middle is the swollen "hippo for breakfast" in this snake.

Satyam Fiasco : Meeting market expectations

Did not want to jump in and comment with all the noise. However, there seems to be a MAJOR point missing in all that I've read - MARKET EXPECTATIONS

If one reads Raju's letter carefully, there seems to be an invisible struggle within the "Mea Culpa" tone that is saying - I did what was expected of me by the market ? Is this true ?

I've sat through a number of earnings calls / shareholders meetings (Disclosure : I own shares in quite a few IT companies - but, never had SATYAM) where the analysts are always asking just a common set of questions. These being
- What has been your revenue growth and what will be your revenue growth ?
- What has been your margin % and growth ?

These questions themselves are fine - however, the expectation of benchmark is that revenue will grow at almost 100% Y-O-Y and margin will always be upwards of 40% !!

These are not sustainable in the long run and are unrealistic benchmarks.

As long as the expectations of analysts and market watchers are not "reasonable" expect the response to it to be correspondingly "un-reasonable"

The market has to realize that 30% revenue growth, 15-30 % margins are all "GOOD" and "REASONABLE" in a growth market and these are sustainable values that show good governance.

Is it the expectation / is it mandatory to have 40% + margins to tell the market that you have a well run company ?

Managing managers : The art of whitewash ?

A couple of evenings ago, during dinner with a visitor from the US - someone I know very well, the issue of outsourcing to India and the problems experienced came up as a natural point of debate.

Background
- A major networks product company has outsourced their product development to an Indian vendor. The vendor has been late in delivering the project to such an extent that the original US company has lost it's competitive advantage in the market and with the downturn it may have also lost the window of opportunity.

We started to discuss the different approaches that are taken and why this has either worked / not worked in this particular case
- Getting a 3rd party to validate work : This is being done by an US company and the process has not been effective : could the main reason be that that this "validation" company does not
a) Understand the onsite-offshore play and is hence stuck in-between with no value add ?
or b) The intermediary is not involved in the product development process and hence is always having to fall back on "process" compliance / status reports to understand viewpoints ?
or c) A combination of the above 2 with a the real issue being that the intermediary is playing a "relay" role only and is not capable / empowered to make decisions ?


- Ensuring that a senior person capable of making decisions is working with the offshore team to validate delivery.
On this point, the discussion moved to the next question ie. "what is the value then of the offshore delivery team ?"

- Ensuring that someone from the offshore team acts on-behalf of the onsite team ?
Apparently, this was tried with very little success and the main reason for this being
a) Tendency of the senior management of the offshore team in taking the status mechanism and obscuring the real status !
b) Mixed messages between the team on ground and the reviewers
c) Incapable team leadership in terms of priority of issues to be addressed / sequencing (always supply driven sub-optimal solutions)

Notice though, that at NO time during the discussions, was there a question on the CAPABILITY of the delivery team ?


In the end, does it mean that we have just incapable project managers / general managers in the system ?

Or, are they supremely capable in "whitewashing projects" ?

Data access acceleration : HW or SW based GRID ?

For once, I thought I'd blog on a technical subject :-)

The question that has been in my mind is that - which is a better option for large volume data management - is an hardware solution better or a software solution - or even a combined one ?

About 2 months ago, at the Oracle Open World conference, I watched Larry Ellison announce the HP-Oracle DB machine. During the presentation, I was both bemused (with the idea that this was Larry’s / Oracle’s second venture into the hardware territory post NC) and the fact that for Oracle and HP to come up with this meant there was a real issue with the proliferating data.

As most of the readers would be aware, the last few quarters have seen a tremendous number of activities related to Virtualisation, Grid computing, Cloud computing and High volume data management. What are the options?

Hardware Options: Generally handled with Virtualisation and Grid computing effort as is also Custom Built machines (e.g: HP-Oracle DB machine). While it is a clean way to get to an array structure (CPU slices + Storage Array etc), I am not really sure if this is “efficient” – simply because, the core software / application was never written to take advantage of this.

Software Options : For a “pure” software option to work – there has to be two important components; A mechanism for Caching (In memory caches) and a mechanism for load balancing / splitting into parallel processing threads.

In my opinion, there is going to be a push for a combination of the two with distributed service architecture to manage the growing SOA / message structures inherently with a combination of GRID and CACHE (in memory).

I see three major players in the market today with fairly similar / competing offerings;

1. Oracle with it’s COHERENCE offering (Object oriented in memory DB cache) which is actually a product / company acquisition – Tangosol.
2. Gemstone with it’s GEMFIRE offering (again OODB / in memory DB cache) and
3. Gigaspaces with it’s XAP offering

The only issue I see with these offerings is that all the I/O needs to be re-configured / re-written using specific API’s to make use of the new features. This is a big issue, the questions to ask are; what is going to force the developers of COTS data access / reporting / application product suppliers (eg. Oracle, IBM-Cognos, SAP-BO etc) to provide this API access? Why would they invest in these during a downturn when no “new” product licenses are visible?

You can also see similar postings in the cross link at http://calsoftblog.blogspot.com/

Making a shared computer PERSONAL - An experiment in education

Disclosure - this is an overview post, please lookup Sikshana blog for actual details / instances etc.
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As part of the Sikshana process, Subbu (the resident computing / education expert) was posed with a simple question : If we distribute a laptop / class in the rural schools, how do individual students preserve their own environment and work over several days / periods / sessions ?

The problem seems simple - but, this has a major impact on the psyche of the individual kid. Today, if a child is working on a drawing / painting project, there is a good chance that while using the shared computer, another child will over-write / update / change the first child's work.

Even if that happens on a rare occasion, the child is left disillusioned about the whole project.
This is a tremendous problem not just with sharing, but, also with preserving the session as "active" so that there is no loss in time the next instance the child logs onto the system.

Subbu has come up with an ingenious solution (I believe). The idea is to provide a USB chip with enough software to make the chip the default session handler.

Every kid is given a 2 GB chip (Sikshana is in the process of distributing a 1000 of these to kids), which the child owns.

Every time the child accesses the computer, the child inserts his / her own chip and is up and away immediately. Saves time and also the heartbreak of having someone else destroy one's own work.

The question in my mind is : Is this not the same for offices too ? Can we not make this a commercial process ?

The mayhem at Bombay : What ails our security ?

After a long hiatus, I am forced today to blog - more out of anguish and anger. Anguish at the meaningless loss : of human life, dignity to a secure living and life as also property. Anger at the way we have been waiting for deliverance from these by our politicians and babus.

It is these 2 institutions that need to be questioned. I'm not even sure who the bigger culprit is ? Is it the IAS babu who is secure in his / her babudom or is it the politician working the vote banks to get ahead ?

Atleast, with politicians, we the citizens have to take part of the blame in having elected them. However, how about the Babus ?

I see the TV and listen to people mouth the same requirement again and again - co-ordination between the forces, secure border etc. How can we get that when we arm our forces (BSF, Coast gaurd, Police etc) with ancient .22 and .303 rifles / revolvers that are from WWII vintage and NO technology upgradation ?
I did not see night vision glasses, I did not see good smoke masks, I did not see even basic things like body armour. We push these dedicated people to the front and sing to their martyrdom, wait to shake their warm hands when they come back out live ?
I also do not think the structure is a problem - it is just execution.
There is "supposed" to be an emergency cell - atleast this was put together after the Tsunami disaster. There is supposed to be better intelligence sharing. There is a National Security Advisor !!. However, it is the effectiveness that is lacking.

What can be done. Here are a few suggestions - for whatever it is worth.
- Get a "technology" upgrade done immediately with state of the art equipment
- Get the local police and the central teams trained on these new equipment including things like frequency jammers and email traces.
- Get some of the key areas (atleast the public areas like Stations, airports etc) under 100% video surviellance ALL the time.
- Step up random checks on all the roads leading to major cities as also the coast.

I'm not sure if there is a 100% solution - atleast we should make it difficult and with no single point of failure. More importantly, we should pass this set itself to a professional team and not one made up of Politicians and Babus !

Teach India - will the format work ?

I have been watching the Teach India series of ads and the campaign with interest. Having been involved in Primary education for a number of years, the development / the campaign to do raise the awareness and create a media structure of "mass" volunteering is very interesting....

However, part of my skepticism and part experience is making me take a bit of a "back seat" and watch what happens next. The reason(s) being
- I've never seen campaigns that start to evoke the "feel good" factor really pick up steam
- In my interaction with the teachers in primary (esp rural) schools, there is a marked interest in continuity or we (the so called arm-chair intellectuals) run the risk of creating an "excuse" for the teachers / local influencers to point their finger and blame "another" set of people
- Continuity DOES NOT come by a few 2-3 hour sessions, IMHO it takes greater committment.
- Was speaking to a few people who have volunteered and ALL of them were looking at 9-11 kind of session once a week ie. on a Saturday. Have never seen this work either as Saturday AM is the most muddled time for a rural school

What has been good though is the campaign coverage. I do sometimes wonder what would be the "effect" if we had just run a similar campaign asking individuals to contribute an hour's salary and then "hire" real full-time teachers to teach ?
I am sure people will lampblast me for suggesting such an idea - but, I must confess, when it was proposed to me, I thought the "efficiency" of such a process should be much better ?

Getting people to "Visualize" in India

This is a post after a bit of a gap. I guess I'm as prone to the writers' block as anyone else ;-)

Thought I'd post a few comments on how we are NOT trained in our schools to visalize. ...

As most people in our Business Team will tell you, I have this pet peeve that people cannot put together a proposal if they cannot visualize the work to be done. This may sound insane, but, the idea is to get them to think about what needs to be done before they go about describing it in words.

This is exactly the same principle that is used in design (E-R diagrams, state diagrams, Business flow diagrams) or even in mindmaps.

Unfortunately, this continues to be a struggle. Probably the issue is much deeper ?

Late yesterday evening, I was in conversation with one of the senior members who was going to go to Chennai to train a few people. He mentioned that one of his standard questions to guage thinking capability is to ask people to "draw" the equation (a+b) square. ie. get people to explain the concept of why there should be the "2ab" portion. I was not surpised to hear that less than 30% of the people asked to explain could do so !

Maybe we should do a company wide session on visualization followed by De Bono's 6 thinking hats ?

Learning to admit one's mistake - primary lesson to be taught

Last week, I'm told we had the unfortunate and unpleasant task of having to let go of an individual in India for lack of propriety / matter of trust. When I walked through the scenario, I found that the real issue was one of personal ego : as simple as admitting that there had been a mistake on the individuals' part.

What transpired was not at all good for any of the teams involved, neither the end customer, nor Inatech or the individual involved offshore.

What started as a simple mistake that could have been handled quite simply with a "Sorry, we made a mistake" ended up being a standoff. The standoff progressed to a level where "honesty" and "trust" were put up as table stakes. This, IMHO is a no-win game.

What are we doing in schools and colleges if we cannot teach the young that it is "ok" to make mistakes, that, it is "ok" to admit that an error has been committed and an solution / alternative has to be worked together as a team ?

Instead, we end up with a LOT of posturing, threats of walk-outs / resignations etc. When will people learn that there are NO shortcuts in life when it comes to values like "TRUST" ?

Investing in park and share facilities : eg BIAL travel

I think it is time that we started to explore the options available for Park and Share facilities. If we consider the new services available for travel into BIAL from the city - eg. The Vayu Vajra, Airlift etc. All of them have a basic problem and that is of the last mile connection.

I have read about the last mile taxi option in the Vayu Vajra booking site, but, must confess that I do not want to test it. What would be good is if there were park and travel options at key places in the city. This will certainly reduce the amount of people trying to commute / traveling all the way to the airport in their own vehicles just because there is no option in the city for this.

I would love to be able to park (for example near Mekhri Circle) and then take the bus over to the BIAL airport.

Options ? Maybe time for private participation or even influencing BMRTC to think of an option (as they do have parking on top of Shivajinagar bus stand ?)

The loss of a "left luggage" option - Airports in India

The day before yesterday, I lugged my baggage across to Mumbai and back just because the new airport BIAL has no left luggage option and all the airlines do not accept check-in more than 2 or 3 hours before travel time.

The problem arose as I had to fly out to Mumbai and back before I caught an international flight late in the night / early next morning.

In the end - I had to check in my baggage to Mumbai (waste of fuel / energy). Get to Mumbai to realize that they too do not have a left luggage !. Lug the bag in the boot of the taxi and ask for a "left luggage service" from the taxi driver :-)
I checked it back in the evening - unopened.
How I wish my travel bag had a frequent flyer option :-)

I did enquire and was given the standard "Security reasons sir" reply, but, that does not cut ice !

Contrast this to the left luggage desks you get in most railway stations in Europe. Infact, in Germany, the major stations have an "airline style" check in for left luggage. The bags are x-rayed, tagged and bar-coded before being sent to storage on a conveyor belt.

I think it is time people stopped repeating banal reasons as to why something is NOT workable, but, work towards providing solutions. Anyone for teaming up to provide left-baggage service as an entreprenuership option for BIAL ?

Plastic Waste : Carry Bags .vs. Small Sachets

Last week, some of us were chatting about "waste" collection and disposal. This was in relation to what gets done in the UK and India.

While we, the Indians at the table spoke at length at how our culture of "Raddi" / "Kabadi" wallas automatically provide a recycling solution, I was forced to contemplate on what is the rising problem ? Surely the "plastic" menance is not just the less than 40 microns carry bags that is banned ?

Surely the real menance is the new found favour in small packaging / sachets ?

Everywhere (even while trekking in a rural / reserved forest setting), I come across empty small plastic sachets. These would have held either Gutka, chewing tobacco, sweets or even Rs. 1 packs of Shampoo and coconut oil !

These are too many in number and too low a form factor for anyone to pay attention. Therein lies the problem.

If we are serious about controling the use of plastic packaging, IMHO, we should start at the bottom of the pyramid. We should look at a new packaging material (or even an age old one like waxed paper) that is more degradable than the LDPE / HDPE sachets.

Ideas anyone ?

Common sparrows : A lost sight in Bangalore : BIAL has some !

Another post related to BIAL (Bengaluru International Airport) and this one has NOTHING to do with the facility, size, baggage handling etc. This is to do with the sighting of a number of common sparrows !

I'm not sure how many people remember the time in Bangalore where one would sight sparrows, mynahs and the "did you do it" ? bird in abundance.

I'm told that the increase in the crow and the grey pigeon / dove has almost wiped out the sparrow population in the city.

I was pleasantly surprised to hear loud "chirping" in the arrival hall of BIAL on monday. I stopped, looked around to validate that the noise was NOT from an "electronic bird" and was awarded with the sight of a small sparrow flying from one girder to another !

I stood looking around for more of these and as I was looking around, I also noticed a BIAL official with a Motorola "Walkie Talkie" also looking up and around. He was inside the arrivals area and I was already out of the security area. If not, I was going to go up to him and have a chat about his intentions !

I fervently hope that he was not looking around to chase these sparrows away !. That would certainly be a shame and a loss of opportunity for BIAL in terms of a redemption :-)

Noise pollution : Making normal citizens aware of this ?

This morning, being a Sunday, I was hoping for a late sleep-in. Unfortunately, it was not to be : I was woken up before light, approximately at about 4:45 in the morning by some idiot in the apartment complex with his noisy audio "reverse" indicator.

Listening to the loud "beep-ep beep-ep" at that time of the tranquil morning, I was forced to imagine all the things I'd do to this person / car if I were the violent kind.

What is it that makes people think they have the right to make as much noise without remorse ?

This is not the first time that I've noticed / commented or even lamented on the noise level of our Indian roads. However, I'm exasperated. I think we should not have only "honk-free" days but, "honk-free" weekends for a start.

Other instances that I'm sure will strike a chord with my fellow citizens
- Honking by a person in the back while you (and the whole world) is waiting patiently for the traffic lights to go from "red" to "green"
- Honking while overtaking even when one knows it is better to wait for another 50 m to get a good sight of the road ahead
- Switching on the "reversing" audio with various options on tunes
- Even making loud "Beep-Beep" when locking / unlocking the car or vehicle

Is this an attitude or is it education ?
Why is it that people do not use the "silent" option available in most autolock / autocop versions where the instrument can be "muted" ?

Dubai : The local watering hole in the Gulf

Last week I spent an evening out in a restaurant close to the Dubai International Airport. The whole set / sequence reminded me of a trip I had made to Daman about 20 years ago and I thought I'd document both the set.

On a bored weekend, a few friends and I decided to take off from our shared flat in Andheri, Mumbai and head to Daman. We left on a Saturday morning and were in Daman by late afternoon. We checked into the hotel, went out for a late afternoon lunch. There was really no beach to speak of and bored, tired and sleepy after a heavy lunch, we decided to nap till evening. All of what we had seen until then was a sleepy town with hardly anyone in the street and very little activity.

We were in for a contrast. At around 6:30-7:00 most of us came awake at growing noise outside in the road. By the time we washed up and came down to the front of the hotel lobby, there was a sea change. The roads were filled with people, cars and two-wheelers and generally the place looked as though there was a Mela about.

As the evening progressed, this sleepy town went through a transformation that'd put Las Vegas to shame !. There were brawls in pubs / bars and restaurants, there were people walking the streets with liquor in-hand or upto their eye-balls.

As it turns out, Daman is the closest "drinking hole" to Gujarat (DRY!) and the floating population was just that - float in and out over the evening. It almost seemed as though all the people who'd want a drink in Gujarat had gravitated to Daman !

Now, cut to Dubai.

There were just 2 of us who wanted to have a quiet drink and catch up on business developments. I had about 2 hours to kill late in the evening having already checked in and with my boarding card. As we went into the local bar, we saw some people, but, not much.

As the evening / night progressed, I realized that my "Daman experience" was being replayed. Everyone around was drinking more than they could carry and were pretty boisterous. All the frustrations pent up was being spent in a binge. This even led the person with me to comment that all of them seemed to be "Dharam-Bhrasht". To add to this, I even saw a person with the beads of meditation in one hand and a drink in another. Talk about immediate salvation ?


In Daman, by the next morning, the roads were empty of people / traffic, but, crammed with junk and garbage. In a way am glad I was not going to be there the next morning in Dubai

Journalism or Reporting : Where is the media headed ?

A post by P Sainath (author of the book called "Everybody loves a good drought") made me sit up and take notice of the question in the heading of the post.

The book itself is something I picked up on the recommendation of Mr Ramamurty of Sikshana.

While the book is a collection of thought provoking articles, the fundamental question raised at the start needs a very deep / detailed look.

With the proliferation of the online channels (multiple 24x7 news channel included), I think there is less of journalism that comes out of independent thought and reflection and more of "being the first to file a report" happening in India today.

Be it a report on local crime, citizen / civic issue or the coverage of an event that is newsworthy. The worthiness is related to a quick "instant" meal rather than the process of extracting the key essense / doing "root cause analysis"

What I think is needed a bipolar strategy that channels / newspapers and the fourth estate in general should undertake. One that is "responsive" and will file in the reports, while another that is based on reflection and analysis.

The new Bengaluru International Airport - My take on it :-)

I've waited for about a week before I posted on the new Bengaluru International Airport (BIAL as it is going to be known I guess). The reason for the wait was to ensure that I did not post a "first / biased" comment without letting the thoughts in my own mind settle down :-). I guess, the end result should be a more balanced view ?

Let me get over my cribs first (as it popular with the BIAL bashing brigade)

- Not all loos are working : A whole section was blocked off and people were diverted to another area. Even in the area, where one'd expect a hugh crowd - ie. next to the eating joints at departure level, the mens loo has just 4-5 slots ?

- Food area is crowded : There is NO WAY the area is going to take the load. The gates were not fully operational and in the morning, there was already a team of people walking around the area with breakfast trays in hand trying to get a "parking" slot. The coffee line was about 30 feet long !

- Ground handling sucks : While, I did not have to go through a torture at the baggage retrieval area as I was traveling light, I did have to endure a 20-25 minute wait for the bus to cart us from the aircraft to the arrivals hall. While on the bus, I heard a number of conversations in Kannada where there was a LOT of back and forth as to which gate the bus driver was to go to ?

- Expect a LOT of public injury claims on the outside road : Fairly shoddy finish on the exterior with NO thought to safety. It is absolutely dangerous to walk on the footpath / pavement while wet towards the car park. I had to watch every step gingerly as it was very very slippery. This is while some of the vehicles were zipping past just a few feet away !

- Even the road in and out of the airport is not designed well in my opinion. People have to drop to almost ZERO from whatever speed they are traveling at (it is quite high - believe me), in a few feet when they hit the roundabouts. I will not be surprised to see quite a few "Crashes" into the roundabout. We Indians' just do not have the discipline at circles / roundabouts that one sees in places like UK


Let me cover the positive points now (and being an optimist - I like this)

- The first is the feel : The airport **atleast** feels like one now. Right from the road towards the airport, the area is clean and it feels as though you are heading to an airport / heading from an airport.

- While I did hear a few complaints on check-in. For me, it was a breeze

- Parking was also a piece of cake notwithstanding the rate !(although, there was quite a line at exit time due to a single functional gate)

- I was VERY impressed with the long line of Vayu Vajra coaches at the front of the airport. This should go a LONG way to reduce stress once it gets to work properly.

- Also, very impressed with the lack of touts and the orderly fashion people were going towards their exit : Taxi, parking, coaches, shared transport etc.

Balanced Synopsis ?

Excellent start - but, I think someone needs to start thinking of extensions NOW ?
I think the place is going to run out of space / will not be able to take the load within the close of this calendar year !!!