Category Archives: Business

Vinod “Friend of Bill” Gupta’s InfoUSA Receives 2nd NASDAQ Warning

Posted on by

InfoUSA, the Omaha, Nebraska, based data-processing and marketing monolith owned by Vinod Gupta faces the prospect of being delisted from the NASDAQ because the company has not filed its annual reports for the 2007 fiscal year, and again for the period ending March 31.

26clinton-2.190.jpg

The company’s failure to file is due to ongoing litigation involving its shareholders, which has been stayed until June 30. In 2005, shareholder hedge funds Dolphin Limited Partnership and Dolphin Financial Partners filed suit in a Delaware court alleging that InfoUSA founder and CEO Vinod Gupta had spent corporate funds on personal expenses. link

That discreetly worded phrase, “personal expenses,” refers to the extreeeemly questionable corporate-funded generosity dear Vinod showered on his pals, Bill and Hillary Clinton. Among the allegations:

  • Mr. Gupta’s spending on the Clintons is part of a pattern of improper company expenditures for things like luxury cars, jets and houses, as well as a yacht that is notable for being one of the few to have an all-female crew. link
  • InfoUSA made $2.1 million in quarterly payments to Mr. Clinton from July 2003 to April 2005, and in October 2005 entered into a new three-year agreement to pay him $1.2 million. It also gave him an option to buy 100,000 shares of infoUSA stock, with no expiration date. link
  • InfoUSA paid $18,480 in January 2004 to fly Mrs. Clinton “and her four-person entourage” to New York from New Mexico, where she had made a campaign appearance and attended a book signing. Campaign finance records show that her committee, Friends of Hillary, made a reimbursement of $2,127 for that flight. link
  • InfoUSA has spent nearly $900,000 since 2001 flying the Clintons to domestic and international locations and political events…InfoUSA paid for use of a jet plane, the 80-foot yacht American Princess, condos in Hawaii and California and a University of Nebraska-Lincoln stadium box. link

Continue reading →

Outsourcing in equilibrium?

Posted on by

Outsourcing to India is nearly limitless in potential, both boosters and opponents alike claim. As evidence, they point to the proliferation of services that are currently being performed in India. No longer limited to programmers and call centers, outsourcing has grown to encompass BPO, medical transcription, tax return preparation, and concierge services. The latest frontier is the legal profession

In the past three years, the legal outsourcing industry here has grown about 60 percent annually. According to a report by research firm ValueNotes, the industry will employ about 24,000 people and earn revenue of $640 million by 2010. Indian workers who once helped with legal transcription now offer services that include research, litigation support, document discovery and review, drafting of contracts and patent writing. The industry offers an attractive career path for many of the 300,000 Indians who enroll in law schools every year. [Link]

This perspective is based on a vision of India as having a nearly limitless pool of cheap labor, which isn’t true. While there are a lot of Indians, those actually qualified to hold these jobs are fewer in number and competition for these workers is increasing:

Young people say it is no longer worthwhile going through sleepless nights serving customers halfway around the world. They have better job opportunities in other fields… The complaints come at a time when the Indian information technology sector, which includes companies that run call centers and do other outsourced work like medical transcription and claims processing, is facing a dearth of skilled labor… India faces a potential shortage of 500,000 professional employees in the information technology sector by 2010… [Link]

And wages in India for the most qualified workers has increased to the point where there are little to no cost savings for companies:

India’s software-and-service association puts wage inflation in its industry at 10% to 15% a year. Some tech executives say it’s closer to 50%. In the U.S., wage inflation in the software sector is under 3%, according to Moody’s Economy.com…while most Indian technology workers’ wages remain low — an average $5,000 a year for a new engineer with little experience — the experienced engineers Silicon Valley companies covet can now cost $60,000 to $100,000 a year. “For the top-level talent, there’s an equalization,” [Link]

Continue reading →

Smells Like Teen Entrepreneurial Spirit

Posted on by

Cool kid alert: Teen entrepreneur Anshul Samar, age 14. This fiesty entrepreneurial spirit will be one of the key speakers at tomorrow’s Second Annual Teens in Tech Conference, sponsored by Sun, Microsoft, HP, and others.

Anshul is the founder and CEO of Alchemist Empire, Inc. He has created a fantasy role-playing chemistry board game, Elementeo: “Our aim is to combine fun, excitement, education, and chemistry, all in one grand concoction! We don’t want to create a fantasy wizard world or create a boring education textbook world, but combine the two where fun and learning come together without clashing!” [more]

MSN recently featured Anshul in “Whiz Kids: 10 Overachievers Under 21” (thanks to newstab posters garbanzobean and anmdavadi). How did he get started? In in his own words:

Entrepreneurship is cool, and so is chemistry! Both have lots of actions, reactions, explosions, experimentation, and most importantly, the joy and excitement of creating something new! Creating a company has been on my mind for a long time, but it was only in the 5th grade when the idea of a chemistry based card game struck me. I must have created and thrown away dozens of prototypes to get just the right concoction of education and fun. … Elementeo is a game where you create compounds, combat elements, and conquer chemistry… A game of battle, chemical reactions, and powerful scientists… And a game that kids, teenagers, college students, teachers, scientists, parents, and grandparents can all play and have fun.

The excitement Anshul has poured into his maiden entrepreneurial voyage (the game will be released this month!) is evident at his company’s homepage which is very much written in his voice … and in this video from Mark Coker of VentureBeat, taken at the 2007 TieCon conference in Silicon Valley.

Here’s to his motto of “Create, Combat, Conquer!” Continue reading →

The Googlization of Everything

Posted on by

Those who know me well often joke that I’d make a good spokesperson for a Google ad. I can’t help it if Google has changed my life (and I’m sure I’m not the only person who feels that way). The google desktop app has saved my writing life more times than I care to mention, and google calendar is the means by which my husband and I can always convince each other to attend otherwise resisted events (“Oh, you couldn’t make it? I had no idea. Your google calendar said you were free!”)

So, of course, my curiosity piqued when I recently read about Siva Vaidhyanathan’s recent book deal with the University of California Press. siva.gif

Per Publisher’s Weekly:

THE GOOGLIZATION OF EVERYTHING: How one company is transforming culture, commerce and community – and why we should worry, showing how Google is taking on governments, organizations and entire industries – and the implications of Google knowing more about us than we know about it.

(The book began as an open book experiment sponsored by the Institute for the Future of the Book, where Vaidhyanathan is a fellow, and was subsequently picked up for publication.)

Vaidhyanathan is a rising cultural historian and media scholar whose two previous books Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How it Threatens Creativity and The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash between Freedom and Control is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System have met with wide praise.

He is approaching the book as both a fan and as a critic, he says at his website: “I am in awe of all that Google has done and all it hopes to do. I am also wary of its ambition and power.” Continue reading →

Here’s to Closer Ties Between India and Africa

Posted on by

Representatives from 14 African nations were in New Delhi for the first-ever India-Africa summit, which just ended today. (The India-Africa Summit follows closely on the heels of the China-Africa summit of November 2006.)

indiaafrica.jpg Attendees signed off on the Delhi Declaration and the Africa-India Framework for Cooperation, pledging cooperation in the areas of energy, terrorism, climate change and UN Reforms. An informal and equally important outcome: India is looking to play a far more prominent role in Africa’s economic development than China in coming years.

My uncle Gobind is a retired World Bank developmental economist who has served as economic adviser to the government of Ghana. I asked him to share his thoughts on this historic summit.

“While India is less prominent than China in Africa today, both in trade and investments and aid,” he said, “it is more respected than China because of its image, its democracy, its presence in education, industry– especially pharmaceuticals and railways, and IT. There is growing interest in Africa in India, but it is not yet a hot issue, except for mining companies and the new private oil companies like Reliance. India is currently big in Sudan, DRC, Nigeria, Zambia and S. Africa. But it’s increasing its presence everywhere.”

The Emerging Economy report, released yesterday, underlined the role of Indian corporations in driving new technology usage in Africa. From the Earth Times [full story link]:

Chinese corporations have made significant investments in Africa over the past decade. For example, China’s Civil Engineering Construction Corporation is building the $8.3 billion railroad linking Lagos and Kano. However, the Report also points out that Indian entrepreneurs have long enjoyed trading relations in Africa, particularly along the continent’s east coast, running from Kenya down to the tip of South Africa. In the early part of the 20th century Indian engineering and consumer brands were considered as reliable as those coming from Europe. Bilateral trade between India and Africa increased from less than US$ 1 billion in 1991 to over US$ 9 billion in 2005. Today, the Government of India is aiming to achieve a trade turnover of US$ 500 billion by 2010.

My grandfather might be one of those Indian entrepreneurs referred to above. In the 1930s, Dada came to West Africa as apprentice to an Indian trading company. He ended up placing his roots down in Ghana where he opened a chain of movie theatres and imported movies from India and China for a rural audience. Continue reading →

Vin Gupta, Indian Giver? (updated)

Posted on by

Remember this cringe-worthy Superbowl ad about the stereotypical desi salesman who is about to be fired by his cranky white boss? [Update – changed from the Panda ad to the Ramesh ad, thanks VV]

It was written by the CEO of InfoUSA himself, Vin Gupta. The ad was not just offensive, it was a total waste of money:

The panda ad ranked 45th out of 55 ads shown during the Super Bowl. The other Salesgenie ad, with a salesman who thinks he is going to get fired, ranked 50th. [Link]

Gupta doesn’t seem to mind spending money though, as long as it gets him visibility. Gupta is an FOB, a Friend of Bill that is (although he is also a DBD). Gupta is generous to Bill not just with his own personal money, but also with the company’s resources as well:

Gupta’s Clinton connection came into the spotlight last year, when angry shareholders of InfoUSA filed a lawsuit in a Delaware court; claiming that the CEO had wasted millions of dollars of the publicly-traded company to get into Clinton’s good books.

They seem to have good cause. The plaintiffs have alleged that Gupta misused the company jet to fly the Clintons to vacations. Gupta is believed to have paid Bill Clinton $2 million for vaguely-defined ‘consulting services’. In addition, he is alleged to have spent close to a million dollars to fly Bill Clinton around the world for his Presidential Foundation work; and to fly Hillary to campaign events. [Link]

After the Clintons left the White House, Gupta hired Bill Clinton as a consultant. It’s one of two continuing business relationships he has had since leaving office, and it has been worth $3.3 million, in addition to the options on 100,000 shares of stock. [Link]

But here the story shifts, and becomes stranger.

Continue reading →

Mera Farz? How do you say, “A Blogger’s Duty”, in Hindi?

Posted on by

them lashes are real :D Dear ING Direct,

I blog this with a heavy heart.

Earlier today, mastervk submitted a link to a news story which caught my attention; it dealt with gender inequality and speaking out against a regressive advertising campaign in India. Duly noted, I thought, rather sure I was going to blog about it later. I saw the excerpt for this story a few more times throughout the day, but apparently I was not really understanding it, for if I had, the disappointment I suddenly feel would have flattened me earlier.

I didn’t realize they were talking about you.

You, ING, you are the one behind this?

In the commercial, the birth of a girl is followed by what the Delhi government considers as a derogatory statement: Hai To Pyaari Lekin Bojh Hai Bhari (Though loveable, she’s still a burden). “It sends out wrong message,” said education secretary Rina Ray. She has written to National Commission for Protection of Child Rights and Delhi Commission for Women(DCW) asking them to ensure the advertisement is withdrawn and also a public apology is issued by the insurance firm on all channels.
Ray is unhappy with the overall gender bias in the ad, particularly the scene which depicts fathers being weighed down by the financial costs involved in bringing up their daughters and funding their studies so much so that the ground beneath their feet caves in. Ray quotes a hospital scene from the commercial in her letter which depicts girls as a burden.
Ray said: “This is unfair. Parents spend money for a boy’s education too. Then why single out girls, especially when the country is positively debating women empowerment.”
The DCW has written to the insurance company asking them to stop airing the advertisement. “Promoting such biased views on the girl child may have a demoralising impact on women,” said Barkha Singh, DCW chairperson.

The TOIlet paper concludes with this paragraph: Continue reading →

Bolly gets pwned by the Mouse

Posted on by

Bollywood must be reeling from the disrespect paid to it by its smaller cousin in California. It’s not bad enough that the Hindi version of Spiderman 3 broke box office records in India, outgrossing domestic productions with a clear ripoff of Indian cinema complete with Tobey Maguire’s Bollystyle costumes, dancing, and hair acting. But to make matters worse, Disney has been muscling in on Bolly’s home turf, the absurd movie musical.

In an audacious move akin to bringing coals to Newcastle, Disney released High School Musical (1) with songs and dialogue dubbed into Hindi in 2006. The new release involved a few subtle changes that revealed how well Disney understands Indian film audiences:

Consider “Bop to the Top,” the title of a song from the first movie. In India, one of Disney’s most important foreign markets, the phrase was changed to “Pa Pa Pa Paye Yeh Dil,” which the company said roughly translates to “the heart is full of happiness” in Hindi. A Hindi translator contacted by The New York Times said: “It’s sort of like a Duran Duran song. The words sound sexy but mean nothing…” [Link]

The dubbed version of HSM did well enough that now Disney is releasing the sequel, High School Musical 2, with an entirely Indian cast. It’s just one of many versions of HSM2 with local casts – you can see them displayed in this medley of different adaptations of HSM2 from around the world.

Below is the climatic song in the all-desi HSM2, Aaja Nachle, the replacement for “All for One” in the American version of HSM2:

The song is a hit worldwide:

According to Nielsen Media Research, more than 1.5 million children age 6 to 11 watched “Aaja Nachle.” Even in a foreign language, children “can feel what they’re saying,” Ms. Sweeney said. [Link]

The Indian film industry is taking Disney’s blatant neo-imperialism very seriously, and is launching a counter-strike. They have announced that SRK will star in a completely naturalistic biopic of Dalip Singh Saund‘s life to be released for American markets, saying that anything Miramax can do, they can do better.

Continue reading →

Do India’s Stock Market Investors Lack Sophistication?

Posted on by

Via Manish’s News Tab at Ultrabrown, a blog post by John Elliott (“Riding the Elephant”) at Fortune. Is it just me, or is there a certain contradiction in the following paragraphs?

India has unsophisticated investors. I’m talking about stock market investors of course following the stock market crash, with Mumbai’s key Sensex index plummeting 19% from an all time and over-priced high of above 21,000 on January 8 to under 17,000 by Tuesday. Such a remark, judging from past Riding the Elephant experience, will generate a furious tirade of comments, especially from readers based in the United States who are always anxious to protect India’s reputation.

But how else can you explain a market which swings from such extremes. Last week it mobilized bids totaling an astronomic $180 billion for the $2.9 billion initial public offering launched by Anil Ambani’s Reliance Power (which has yet to produce a revenue stream). On Monday and Tuesday, it crashed, seemingly ignoring the country’s strong economic fundamentals. As Palaniappan Chidambaram, India’s finance minister, pointed out when he tried to calm nerves during the slide, the fundamentals are strong. The economy, he pointed out, is growing at around 9%, and the prime minister’s economic advisory council is forecasting 8.5% for 2008-09.

It’s not just Indian retail investors, but foreign funds (many of them based in the United States) that have been rushing herd-like into Mumbai in recent months – and then rushed out on in the past days. This afternoon I spoke to a leading Mumbai banker who has close links with the United States. “If anyone thought that having strong foreign institutional involvement in the Indian market would bring stability, it is clear that that assumption was misplaced,” he said (anonymously because of his links). He complained about a “lack of conviction and analysis” by foreign funds which “on Tuesday told me they were ‘getting the hell out of India’ and today are saying ‘buy.’” (link)

Who is John Elliott referring to when he talks about “India’s Investors”? His title and first sentence suggest he means local Indian investors. But the main focus of his post, starting in the third paragraph, is actually on foreign investors, who have added to the instability of the Indian markets with panic selling. Read the rest of his post — who do you think he is really talking about? Continue reading →

Don’t count your chickens

Posted on by

In our new and improved news tab, I saw a story posted by Chachaji about how Mukesh Ambani was now, at least temporarily, the richest man in the world!

Not actually the richest man in the world, but he is in the top five.

Billionaire Mukesh Ambani today became the richest person in the world, surpassing American software czar Bill Gates, Mexican business tycoon Carlos Slim Helu and famous investment guru Warren Buffett, courtesy the bull run in the stock market.

Following a strong share price rally today in his three group companies…the net worth of Mukesh Ambani rose to 63.2 billion dollars (Rs 2,49,108 crore). In comparison, the net worth of both Gates and Slim is estimated to be slightly lower at around 62.29 billion dollars each, with Slim leading among the two by a narrow margin. [Link]

If this was true, I thought, it was a meteoric rise. In 2006 he was ranked 56th richest in the world according to Forbes, in March of 2007 he was still only number 14. That got Rajni the monkey fact checker curious, so she poked around further.

It turns out that Ambani isn’t the really richest man in the world, although he may be in the top 5 along with Carlos Slim, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Lakshmi Mittal:

Reliance Industries moved swiftly on Tuesday to deny a report that company chief Mukesh Ambani has become the world’s richest man thanks to a surge in stock market. An agency report putting his wealth at $63.2 billion hailed his rise as another triumph for the nation’s booming economy. But Reliance said Ambani was not quite so rich after all, with a net worth of somewhere in the region of $50 billion. [Link]

This is still a huge increase, seeing as he was worth only $20 billion in March, but it doesn’t put him at the top of the heap either.

Honestly though, to me this is all arcane like counting angels on the head of a pin. Once you’re wealthier than Midas, it doesn’t matter to me how much you have. My question is, when will Ambani and Mittal become philanthropists at the level of Buffett and Gates?

Related posts: Today’s Carnegies?, Forbes names India’s richest, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and …

Continue reading →