Life lesson from my dad’s passing

Its been a month since my dad’s passing and as mom and I continue to reminisce about his life and reconcile with his loss, I am realizing that life has taught me an important lesson.

Both Dad and his younger brother were tall and heavy and both had acid reflux issues (thanks to their maternal genes). But how their health unraveled took two contrasting roads.

1. Extreme acid reflux can simulate cardiac issues and this happened for both. Cardiologists did angioplasty on uncle but treating arterial blocks do not stop acid reflux. Uncle lost faith in treatment. Bypass surgery was recommended for dad after 20 days so I figured if he can survive for 20 days, his health can be managed without surgery.

2. Both developed swelling on their hands and feet. Uncle’s condition was apparently not treated. Dad’s cardiologist kept asking about his bypass surgery and ignoring the swelling. So I googled to find out why the swelling was happening. Any issue that affects the working of the heart reduces blood flow to other parts of the body. When kidneys receive lesser amount of blood the body assumes there is not enough water so kidneys start accumulating water, first on the feet and then on the hands. The condition is called edema. Finally when water enters the lungs it becomes pulmonary edema. Then the only treatment left is bypass surgery. Dad’s cardiologist was trying to force bypass surgery on him by leaving the swelling untreated. I immediately changed the cardiologist and consulted a nephrologist who prescribed a diuretic which forces water in the swelled up areas to be released from the body through urination. Uncle refused bypass surgery, water had to be pulled out of his lungs, he developed paralytic stroke and eventually passed away.

3. Dad reduced salt intake drastically after misunderstanding cardiologist’s instruction. I was unfamiliar with the ensuing condition but realized something was wrong with him. Took him to hospital for checkup and found his sodium level freefalling. In another two days he would have had ended up in coma.

4. Dad’s new cardiologist advised me to treat acid reflux at home and not to take him to hospital as acid reflux bouts can seem like cardiac issue and he would end up in the hands of cardiologists.

For the past 10 years, I have been mostly at home and especially in the last 6 years, largely due to market conditions. This gave me the opportunity to try doing different things which led to starting a home based cloud kitchen and in a way fulfill dad’s lifelong ambition to start a restaurant. I forced dad to go to the gym which improved his health drastically. When he suffered stroke like symptoms I chose to take him to a physician nearby who checked him and told me his nerve functions were fine and he was suffering from weakness due to muscle loss caused by protein deficiency. Though he fell a couple of times nothing happened to him and mom and I ensured he never fell down again especially in the bathroom. Broken bones never heal completely in old age, restrict movements which reduces immunity and makes body vulnerable to other diseases. Dad had normal blood sugar and I ensured all his body organs were working well and his blood pressure, essential elements like sodium, potassium and magnesium and vitamin levels were normal. Circumstances prevented me from pursuing a career in medicine but my fundamentals in biology and human anatomy are strong and I read a lot on both.

I did not earn a lot of money in the past 10 years but I was able to save a lot of money on dad’s treatment. If I hadn’t been at home. he may have underwent bypass surgery which could have ruined his health. Most importantly, he was able to live a disease free life, eat and do everything he wanted to and go peacefully. I could not have bought him this with all the money in the world. Is it possible to become successful without having a lot of money and everything that comes with it? I guess it is.

The deeper impact of the Adani meltdown

A critical aspect of the fallout of the Adani group or any similar large business is how its lenders are going to deal with the aftershock and this is something I haven’t seen addressed anywhere. Post covid all big and small lenders are aggressively liquidating assets of borrowers whose loans have turned NPAs. I know this because I proof read ads of possession and sale notices published by banks and other lending financial institutions in newspapers through an advertising company. I have seen sale notice of asset for a measly Rs. 4 lakh loan. Why are banks behaving like extortionists? Because they are unable to recover business loans.

Businesses that borrow monstrously like in the case of Adani Group have fixed assets and very little in the form of liquid assets. They do not have a single lender but a consortium of lenders like in the case of Vijay Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines fiasco. When his airline business nosedived and went south he informed the lenders that he is unable to manage it anymore. The lenders got together and decided to invest more into his business hoping he could somehow turn things around. Finally, all that the lenders had were office buildings and airplanes to liquidate. Because of their vast influence over governments and civil administration these business leaders are unaffected by the consequences of NPAs.

So what can banks do to control their losses to some degree and repay investors who have invested with them? Turn to individual borrowers because they are helpless when the SARFAESI Act is enforced on them for forceful recovery of loans. What is worrisome is, if the Adani Group sinks even the recovery of all individual NPAs is not going to help banks overcome the catastrophic aftershock.

Indian opposition parties are up in arms against the Modi-Adani bonhomie. They are 9 years too late. When Modi was the PM candidate in the 2014 elections, he used to travel by helicopter to election rallies all over India from Gujarat and return the same day. The helicopter, pilot and fuel were all provided by Adani. This was in the public domain and everyone knew about it. Adani is a businessman and anyone who thought he was doing this merely out of friendship was being naïve. He was making a massive investment and what was he expecting in return? Now we know. Full and unfettered access to the corridors of power and to public money. The full extent of the financial damage that has been caused may never be revealed. What is required is a Supreme Court monitored fully independent financial audit, of all businesses of the Adani group and of all the financial institutions that are lenders of the Adani group. This is what the opposition parties should vehemently demand for. As long as the BJP is in control of the central government this will remain a fantasy.

Understanding Business Objectives In The Chaos Of Corporate Layoffs

News of layoffs from Silicon Valley heavyweights and the startup world are grabbing headlines and eyeballs each day now. Professional social media platform LinkedIn is inundated with posts from laid off employees expressing anguish at the way they were locked out of company premises and office computer networks abruptly. There are several reasons for what has been happening but it would be better understood by first looking at business fundamentals and other underlying factors.

All companies aspire to grow their revenue and profit margins Year-On-Year (YOY) and this is the mandate of their top executives. Business strategies are created for both revenue generation and cost saving (money saved is money created) based on market analysis and macroeconomic conditions. This results in the initiation of projects which when executed results in the development of products, services, etc which can either be commercialized and monetized to generate revenue or used internally to increase efficiency and thereby reduce cost to companies. Bigger companies will have multiple projects and startups will be mostly working on developing a single product/service. Now, there are business evaluation methods (NPV, IRR) to establish if a project can be successful but there can be hurdles during project execution, introduction of similar products/services and other market changes, changes in macroeconomic conditions and availability of funds that can fail the project and failure of companies in case of startups.

There is a business evaluation model called PEST which is used to analyze macroeconomic conditions to determine the success or failure of a business initiative. PEST stands for Political-Economic-Social-Technological. PEST was later extended to PESTEL to include Ecological and Legal factors. Ecological can be largely divided into two factors – natural disasters and diseases. Companies have traditionally ignored ecological factors during business evaluations. The first time I came across ecological factor becoming relevant was after the devastating Mumbai flood in 2005. A client that had outsourced its IT operations to a service provider based out of Mumbai asked for a disaster recovery (DR) team to be set up in Bangalore. But diseases were completely ignored.

When the COVID pandemic struck in 2020 and countries went into lockdown, supply chains got massively disrupted. Companies were forced to modify their strategies and operations with immediate effect or close down. As the lockdowns extended, many of the ongoing projects became reduntant temporarily while new business opportunities started coming to the fore. Online home delivery and educational platforms popped up and thrived. Hiring increased substantially to implement and support new projects. It was evident that lockdowns had to end or would cripple economies of countries but where companies seem to have grossly mistaken is in their assumption that businesses would not or take a long time to return to pre-covid situation. My understanding is, if businesses had done their evaluation by considering ecological factors and specifically the factor of diseases and understood the implications, the world would not have had to go through what it had to for two years of the pandemic.

It is well known that majority of projects initiated by companies and majority of startups fail. Companies try to absorb employees in failed projects into other projects whereas startups are left with no option but to let go off their employees. But organizational consolidation amid fears of impending economic recession, disruption caused by Russia-Ukraine conflict and rising inflation and interest rates have resulted in the layoffs we are seeing now. There are different categories of employees that have been impacted now.

1) Employees on bench – Employees who are not assigned to projects or are out of projects and yet to get new projects are assigned to bench where they are trained on new technologies and topics while they continue to receive their monthly salaries. Normal practice is, most employees on bench get assigned to new projects and those who don’t are let go after a specific period of time. When layoffs due to consolidation is initiated, bench employees are the first ones to be affected.

2) New/recent joiners – When projects slow down or become redundant, new/recent joiners get impacted first when projects are shut down or team sizes are trimmed.

3) Senior employees – Yes and no surprises. All companies expect their employees to upskill themselves along with increasing experience and move up the ranks. While it is true that the corporate pyramid becomes thinner with increasing height, employees who choose to do nothing or continue staying in specific roles become redundant with time and replaceable. In a previous job, I have seen experienced people of a specific skill being let go and people with less experience of the same skill being hired to fill up those roles. Senior resources are needed in projects only till the time the projects become stable and all information is documented. Then projects can be run easily with a couple of senior people and team members with lesser experience who need to be paid far less salaries. This is also a way for the companies to reduce expenses and make the projects profitable. Moreover, new graduates are leaving colleges with the knowledge of latest technologies and who need to be paid only a fraction of what the senior employees are being paid. This is also making senior employees redundant and expendable.

Top executives are needed for businesses to ride through the storm so they will not be let go off now. In the recent past, some companies were offering high severance packages for top executives to take voluntary retirement because new and young leaders bring fresh perspectives into leadership roles.

It is important to note here that as employee headcount increases the number of internal staff in human resources, facilities and other departments also increase. These employees play no part in revenue generation and add on to cost to the company. Employee reduction also results in the reduction of internal staff count.

Do we need to fear or worry about layoffs? Lush green forests dries out in the summer heat and just a single spark of fire is needed to burn it to the ground. All that smoke and heat, in turn. rises up and brings rain. From the ashes, life springs up again. Life is cyclic and this is the Universal truth. Difficult times force us to introspect and is the time for reality check. These are the times which help us to understand if we want to learn something new and get back into the market or find our true passion and set our lives in a new direction. Any transition is difficult and no one is living happy, peaceful and stable lives which is what everyone is aspiring for. Challenges will come in everyone’s life at some point in time. Overcoming them and moving forward is what makes us truly successful. 

The startup ecosystem is all about money and nothing about innovation

The recruiting head of a startup company based out of my home state in India contacted me recently for a senior role. Seemingly buoyed at my profile being a good fit for the role, she immediately set up an online interview. I went through the company website and checked out the team. When the interview invite came, I saw that the CEO was in the list of attendees and checked his LinkedIn profile. Turned out he had done all his education and all his work experience was with companies in my home state. He has never stepped out to work and has experience only in working with small to medium local companies and not with large and multinational enterprises. Having the polar opposite of his background I would have been a complete misfit in his company. Just as I had thought, during the interview it was evident from his body language and his way of speaking that he had no intention of hiring me. Couple of takeaways from this.

1) Recruiters look for match between job description and candidate profiles and largely ignore the cultural fit aspect. It isn’t about the organization culture but the specific team culture for which the hiring is being done and the tone of the culture is set by the hiring manager which is defined by the manager’s personality, technical and people management competency and at times even their academic background. In the case of startups the CEO/Founder sets the tone of the organization’s culture. When candidates are rejected before/after interviews cultural mismatch is one major reason which is never mentioned. Whenever people have asked my opinion about joining companies I have told them any organization is fine what matters are the role, the manager and the team’s culture. At the lower levels of the corporate pyramid, team culture doesn’t matter much but assumes significance as responsibilities grows with roles.

2) The head of a department in a government engineering college in my home state once told me that students are no longer interested in completing their degrees and are obsessed with starting companies. This startup culture is being fueled by the glorified stories of Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg being college dropouts and going on to build Microsoft and Facebook, Sabeer Bhatia founding Hotmail and selling it to Microsoft and by the relative ease of acquiring funding now. The new trend is the growing obsession of having one of the CXO designations. Startups are largely associated with innovation which has distorted the meaning and purpose of innovation. Innovations have impacted, improved and drastically changed the entire human race. Radio, TV, Telephone, Fan and Penicillin are some of the best examples. For me, an air conditioner is not an innovation because it is still a luxury and hasn’t reached the majority of human population but a mobile phone has. How many of such innovations do we see coming out from the startup ecosystem and impacting humanity positively? Now it is all about money, go-to-market strategy is all about commercializing ideas and monetizing them, raising funds, achieving breakeven, becoming profitable, paying back investors, equity and financial ratios and percentages. The concept of innovation and business being for the people and by the people has largely eroded away. When I asked the CEO what his future plans for his company was he replied that he wants to expand internationally but not in India. Someone who knows nothing about international work culture is having lofty aspirations to go global with his business. Clearly, his focus is on generating higher revenue by leveraging on the weaker Indian Rupee compared to the Dollar and Euro. With such narrow vision these startups and CXOs aren’t going a long way ahead.

Moonlighting – Necessity born out of poor governance and toxic corporate culture

Rishad Premji, son of Wipro founder chairman Azim Premji recently commented that moonlighting or working in multiple jobs simultaneously is unethical and amounts to cheating. Question to ask here is, why do employees in India moonlight? There are several reasons:-
1) The most important one – monetary needs driven by inflation, taxes, medical needs, supporting aged parents and children, paying loans and a ton of other reasons and salary increments companies give that do not even remotely match the ever increasing needs brought on by the above mentioned factors.
2) Dissatisfaction in their current full time jobs because of poor management and bad managers, poor salaries and salary hikes and work that is monotonous, nothing to learn from and devoid of challenges.
3) Taboo imposed by hiring managers and recruiters who look down upon employees who switch jobs frequently.
4) For younger professionals looking to grow, moonlighting gives them the opportunity to learn more quickly and compete better in the job market.

Rishad Premji can say what he wants from his position of inheritance and privilege. Company owners, CEOs and other top executives who take paychecks that are 100 to 1000 times of the peanuts doled out to regular employees will not have the need to moonlight. Only if he is in the shoes of someone who is moonlighting will he truly understand why employees do one full time job, come home exhausted and compromise on their health, well being and family time to work more.

Tax collectors in Delhi were colluding with businesses to help them cheat on their taxes. In 2015, the new Delhi state government started providing tax collectors with bikes to travel, paid their fuel bills and gave them laptops, mobiles and incentives on tax collection. Revenue generated from tax collection jumped exponentially in a year’s time because tax collectors felt guilty about cheating the government that was taking so much care of them. This is a great example for companies who are complaining about moonlighting employees to learn from and start taking care of their employees so that they don’t feel the need to moonlight.