- You can create and share your survey with anyone quickly.
- The survey page looks modern and professional.
- The best part is – you can see the survey responses added to the workbook in real time
- The data is added to Excel in the backend, so easy to analyze.
Creating surveys using SkyDrive and MS Excel
Winning in India Market
Just read a great interview by Ravi Venkatesan ( Ex-Chairman of Microsoft India). I would say this was a very well articulated interview by him which explains why companies need to invest in India. Below is an excerpt from the interview which I loved reading it.
If you stick with India, there are four important things you can learn:I am waiting for his book to be published later this year - Conquering the Chaos: Win in India, Win Everywhere. I hope it would be as interesting as his interview was.
A lean cost structure: I.B.M. has more employees in India than anywhere else. Honeywell has 20,000 people here. John Deere a third of its engineers in Pune. That’s adding several hundred basis points to the bottom line for them.
Second, Indian products are good for other markets: While I was with Cummins, we made a small generator here for India. Now I can go to Home Depot and buy their generator set, made in Pune. As southern Europe gets poorer, consumer products tailored for India are selling there – smaller size sachets of shampoo, for example. The Spanish and Greeks can no longer afford to buy what they could buy before.
Number three, you’ll find excellent talent: a lot of Unilever or Procter & Gamble’s African business executives are from India, for example.
And fourth: Having operations in India will fundamentally change most overseas companies. For instance, in 1996, I came here to a troubled joint venture that Cummins had with the Tatas. Instead, we turned it around and now, Cummins has 55 joint ventures worldwide, and almost all of them are making money. In many ways, Cummins learned how to manage difficult joint ventures in India.
Two months are already over in the new year
It is two months already into the new year, and lot of things have happened. This post is just a diary update for the last two months.
It looked like as if I had just posted my 2012 review, What was planned earlier this year took a big turn and it is going in a different direction. Life is always a suspense thriller, with only difference that all of us know what is the end of the movie. Sadhguru often says this statement – “Right from our birth, every step we take is to the grave”. I am already sounding too philosophical in this post.
I visited Sabarimala, in January. This is the first time I went alone with a new group, the last time I visited when I was 12 years old with my father. So this experience was totally mind blowing. If you are dominated by emotions, probably devotion is the best way to attain bliss. The whole perspective of life suddenly changes in a pilgrimage, all your problems becomes small. Sometimes we get over consumed with our problems, but when I saw more than a million people in those 4 days of walk in the forest to temple, my problems / things I feel great - all looked so small. There were new set of friends I met there and definitely enjoyed the overall experience of walking barefoot in the hills for the two days and staying overnight in the forest without much comfort we are used to. The 50 days mandala vratham I went through prior to this journey got my health back to a decent shape.
Late January I wanted to start on my running and cycling plan. I was all set for the Auroville marathon in first week of Feb. But the week before in one of the cricket matches in our office , my knee gave up and caused a severe swelling. So post diagnosis, it’s a ACL tear, so I would be not running at least 6-7 months till I recover. Feb month was mostly behind any of the screens - either my new HTC 8x phone or my new Asus Ultra book – both were given in office. I am really enjoying the Windows 8 and Windows phone 8 beautiful interface.
Mid Feb, went for Inner Engineering program organized by Sadguru himself close to the place I live. Nothing more I can ask, it was definitely worth the 3 days of time I spent in the course. Sadguru has a wonderful way of engaging the audience and there were sessions continuously without any break for about 4-5 hours, and I never looked at the watch – fully engrossed by his mesmerizing speech.
Just finished a book – Power of Habit, this book is definitely worth the money. The primary framework Charles Duhigg uses in the book – Every Habit has a Cue – Routine – Reward loops. Once that is formed, we don’t think too much when such a cue happened, we follow the loops. By his compulsive story telling he would have explained these concepts for individuals, organizations & societies. He does cover on how we can change habits, in a simple framework in the end of the book.
Also recently I started writing restaurant reviews in Zomato ( for now its only Hyderabad). Check out the reviews if you have time.