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Journalism of Courage
Why does Sanjeev Bhikchandani of naukri.com seem to be at loggerheads with Ajit Balakrishnan of rediff.com? After all, these tycoons don’t even offer the same product. And well, that is exactly where the spark of war begins. Some of Bhikchandani’s subscribers have apparently not been receiving their job update mails. Smelling something fishy, Bhikchandani looked deeper into the matter and discovered that all the bouncing mails were that of rediffmail users. The story began to unfold. In reality, all this was a result of the increased spam complaint faced by Balakrishnan. So there has been blocking of mail, which invariably included the job alert mails as well. Bhikchandani counter attacked by sending mails to the rediff users telling them to log on from other ids. But that obviously is not going to meet with favourable response from Balakrishnan. Balakrishnan worries because the going has not been smooth for portals during this economic slowdown. Naukri however does not have much to lose. Being the pioneer in its field and having firmly stood its ground during the slowdown, it could perhaps afford the war. But Bhikchandani disagrees. And he wonders whether Rediff has been deleting Monster mails as well, its jobs site partner? It remains to be seen who is going to win in this new form of tycoon warfare, over territory in the Internet era.
Synthesising strategies
O.P. Lohia is certainly perplexed with the ongoing events in the textile industry. The tycoon leading Indo Rama Synthetics has been facing one boulder after another in his way. For starters it was the budget not weighing favourable for the industry. The high excise duties levied and the cheap Chinese imports did not meet with his accord. Another obstacle is that Reliance having acquired the polyester units of ICI, JCT, Raymond Synthetics and JK Corp are now giving every other player in the textile game a run for its money. Yet another thorn on his path has been the qualification of annual accounts by auditors. The allegory behind it is that the company went ahead and provided for a 10 per cent dividend without adjusting for accumulated losses. Lohia claims that Indo Rama is generating sufficient cash to be able to reward its shareholders. Meanwhile, the board of directors has approved a demerger of the polyester and spun yarn. Lohia feels that this would result in better valuations of the two businesses. Polyester is more capital-intensive and technology-led, while spinning is more labour-intensive. Because of this, the two businesses require different strategies and separate valuations to get the true picture. This may make Lohia lose the boulders and finally get going.
Bajaj ko gussa kyon aata hai
Rahul Bajaj and his cousins may manfully paper over the imminent split of the group. But the unfortunate fact is that Rahul’s stress levels were high enough to require medical attention. What hurts the patriarch most is that this comes as a blow to his personal style of managing conflict. Rahul has always been good at it—specially because at most times the man has been busy in his battles with government over policy issues. Will the corporation that Bajaj runs suffer from this trauma? Insiders bet that this may well trigger some more serious attempts at getting senior professionals into key managerial positions. If that does work then peace may hold for a while more. Otherwise the mutterings from elsewhere, temporarily silenced by the current trauma, could grow. Rahul’s advantage is that he is a conservative family manager and his company has a war chest of cash that’s the envy of many others in his business. If he keeps up his spirits and sits tight on the money, then the man’s going to continue sailing happily despite the winds that buffet all groups at one time or the other.
(Dilip Cherian, runs a public affairs firm Perfect Relations. He is an economy watcher and tycoon tracker . None of the people he writes about are his clients. Your insider tales are welcome at dlipcherian@now-in)
