Author: Commwiser

Becoming a successful entrepreneur is not about destiny, it is a deliberate process which has its set of rules. The art and science of being a successful entrepreneur is about following established processes, putting in pace systems and having a strategy in place.

At a recent panel discussion on ‘Entrepreneurship 101’, Aman Abbas, Co-Founder, Commwiser, Kriti Sharma, Senior Commercial Lawyer, Seema Jhingan, Partner Lexcounsel, Sushma Gaikwad, Director, Ice Global & Wizcraft MIME, all successful entrepreneurs in their own way, shared the science behind becoming successful entrepreneurs.

The session was moderated by Reema Sanghvi, Managing Director, Maximus Mice & Media Solutions.

Sushama Gaikwad spoke about the need to have clarity of vision and create more intrapreneurs at work, “Entrepreneurs need to have clarity about their vision. They need to ask themselves why this business is important, and we must remember that  in the end, it is the vision that drives the enterprise.”

Gaikwad also urged start-up owners to give serious thought to creating more intrapreneurs in order to make the organisation truly successful. “We should not employ talent that we guide, instead, we need to employ talent that guides us and inspires us. Our job as entrepreneurs is to create more entrepreneurs. Growth of an organisation is finally determined by the quality of intrapreneurs we create within the organisation,” added Gaikwad.

Seemav Jhingan, Partner Lexcounsel, spoke about the legal aspects that start-up owners often tend to overlook. “There are a number of must-haves as far as the legal aspects of startups are concerned. Start-up owners need to look at the legal structure and the legislative paradigms they will be working in before going ahead with the venture. Most of the startup’s focus very little on the registrations and licensing processes which should be a top priority.”

Kriti Sharma, Senior Commercial Lawyer spoke about the need to be investor ready. “You have to make sure that your paperwork is in place and your compliances are in place to be investor ready.”

“Culture of an organisation is very important. Holding people accountable through systematic processes is the key to building a successful venture. I think entrepreneurs need to focus on creating the right culture in the organisation, “ stated Aman Abbas, Co-Founder, Commwiser.

Imagine you are being chauffeur driven in an Audi A6 at a price of a Maruti Alto? Won’t you talk about it among your family or friends? When Uber came to India, it did one of the most innovative marketing to create fantastic conversations. First, they offered all luxury cars at prices even the local taxi stand guy with most shoddy cars couldn’t offer. And then, the referral scheme that made people jump with joy. Almost everyone sent their referral codes to everyone they knew. And the awareness skyrocketed.

And then reality struck that we can consume what we can afford. The main factor of taking app-based cabs is convenience and competitive pricing.

But right at the beginning, brand awareness got created like wildfire which resulted in a tremendous amount of trials.

Consumers of PR would ask where is PR here? Well, the case above is a fantastic PR story. PR is just not restricted to what media writes about you but how it creates stories around you irrespective of the medium. It’s much more nuanced and works at a strategic level if understood correctly.

There is nothing like our age-old ‘word of mouth’ publicity. Just that those mouths have become fingers and conversations have moved on to social platforms. Very often, we see people discussing brands as in how good or bad they are; or how they are impacting affecting the society. Positive conversations among like-minded people is arguably one of the best reputation drivers and one of the most potent tools for the marketers if they are able to tap this well.

PR, as it is popularly called these days, is about ‘storytelling’. However, the story needs to create a response. When the response is in the form of a (positive) ‘conversation’, it leads to action. The action could be the creation of a positive impression in the minds of stakeholders or even sales in some cases.

And positive conversations could be for any brand or a cause.

Use selfie-camera

Very often, we look at our audience and create ‘key messages’ around each of the audience set. Now let’s take a ‘selfie camera’ approach and think about how our audience views us. While we think, for instance, a brand’s big, global stature would create awe among the audience, they may, on the contrary, get intimidated. If a brand has got big budgets for marketing, chances are that they would have gotten this through customer insights. So, the key messages may see ‘corrections’ based on these insights. In the case of smaller organisations, the approach is inside out, which at times makes campaigns go horribly wrong.

In the new ‘conversation’ age of PR, we will have to create desired conversations. And those desired conversations should be led by stakeholders among the homogenous group of stakeholders. That will help brands move the needle.

But remember, these conversations must be genuine conversations unlike many ‘customer stories’ or ‘case studies’ sponsored by big brands that look fake.

Businesses will need to work hard towards creating those genuine customer experiences that are making a real impact on customers’ lives. For a professional services firm, its transparency, client servicing and sincere advice are prerequisites. For a consumer brand, maintenance-free products and good pre and post-sales customer service is a necessity.

PR can play the role of enablers to elicit a positive response from different stakeholders or customer groups.

For one of our clients in the education sector, one of the issues were of teacher retention. The economics of the business did not allow them to give extra-ordinary salaries, which was one of the major drivers for the teachers to switch-over. So, we instead created a programme that made them feel valued. Based on positive feedback from the parents, we profiled teachers by capturing affinity showed by children and parents. And then these videos were circulated in the pan-India network, which created positive conversations among teachers as well as parents.

The conversational approach requires one to think beyond key messages and map out what is the desired conversation among a group of stakeholders that would inspire them to the desired action.

So, conversations leading to word of mouth that really influences.

Life comes to a full circle…hasn’t it?

Aman Abbas and Anant Ghuge review the major legal issues and policy developments that made headlines in India’s mainstream media

The pages, websites and studios of the mainstream media were buzzing with matters before India’s various courts and tribunals this past year. Notwithstanding issues that have a direct bearing on public interest, many matters that took centre stage would in previous years have found mileage only with the financial media.

So it’s no surprise that in exploring some of the themes that represented the most exciting legal developments in 2018, this article targets issues of policy and law that had a heavy impact on business and featured prominently in the business dailies, magazines and newswires of the nation.

NPAs and the non-partisan dialogue

The big battle among Indian business houses saw many overlook major changes occurring elsewhere. India’s overleveraged banks and the collapse of the shadow banking sector thus took second place behind the battle for family business and their struggles to retain control. The media dialogue revealed a murky corporate world where family-owned conglomerates fought as much to regain control of their assets as their reputations.

The case of Ruias and the Essar Steel insolvency took many twists and turns as the “defaulters” (Essar founders Ruias) sought as much to battle a crisis of control as a crisis of image. Their final rescue bid for Essar came after the insolvency process, where other bids to save the company had surfaced. For legal experts, this caused concern as the procedure versus value maximization debate left courts reeling.

Precedents set in smaller matters, Binani Cement for instance, pitted the letter of the law against the jurisprudential sanctity of enforcement after the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal had allowed a revised bid by UltraTech Cement to be made after the bidding deadline. The tribunal ruled that the aim of the insolvency process is to extract maximum value from the assets, and said the initial top bidder Dalmia Bharat’s bid was “discriminatory” against certain creditors.

Insolvency dominated the headlines, followed closely by liquidity concerns and recapitalization of public sector banks. On the other hand, the insolvency regime created new markets with a number of institutional investors and funds increasing their exposure to India’s stressed asset market. For players such as Vedanta, bidding for steel makers such as Essar Steel meant that a mining company, which extracted the raw material, could now own a steel manufacturer, effectively absorbing the demand side into the supply chain and opening up new avenues and markets.

Real estate found mention under the insolvency code, which seemed to have addressed ₹3 trillion worth of distressed assets. This sector saw the highest significance in terms of public interest and the law, as home buyers fought to be included as creditors under the insolvency code. Infrastructure, too, took a beating with Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services (IL&FS) coming under the scanner of the Serious Fraud Investigation Office for having under-represented the scale of their non-performing assets (NPAs).

Privacy probably won’t survive

Data privacy captured the interest of both business and consumers. The Cambridge Analytica scandal hit India hard, just as the constitutional validity of India’s unified identity system, the Aadhaar, was being challenged in the Supreme Court. Companies, particularly telecom service providers, were anxiously waiting to see what the Supreme Court would say, and when it finally did, it revealed an overreach by lawmakers, for which telcos would have to pay the price. After the Supreme Court ordered telcos to stop using the Aadhaar-based know-your-customer system to register new users, companies had to revert to the old system, which led to challenges in attracting new customers.

The Indian counterpart of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation went through as an ordinance, and the law is still in the making. What took more of the spotlight was not compliance, but a breach that had taken place, with the bulk of the leaked accounts in the Facebook scandal being Indian.

The issue sent shockwaves through India’s political sector, with India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology taking the fight to WhatsApp in light of social unrest caused by “fake news” relating to religion, politics and violence among other things being pedalled on the platform.

A cryptic ban

The fight against “black money” took an unexpected casualty. Crypto currencies, a prime suspect in money laundering, were taken to task. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI), following the policy impetus that sanctioned the 2016 currency ban, didn’t have much to say. But users of crypto currencies, who had made the switch to avoid standing in serpentine lines to withdraw cash from ATM machines, were left stranded as their bank accounts were closed with a month’s notice.

On the run

Vijay Mallya had made headlines for the defunct Kingfisher Airlines, but the man that really blew the lid off bank frauds was fugitive Nirav Modi. The cabinet passed the Fugitive Economic Offenders Bill as an ordinance, which enabled law enforcement to seize assets at arm’s length from the fugitive. Alleged close political ties between members of the government and Modi made good fodder for the opposition, while legal and financial minds tried to wrap their heads around the extent of the losses to defrauded banks.

JIO and the telecom disruption

The Indian telecommunications market saw the biggest disruption in decades when Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance Industries entered the sector with JIO. The scale of the price wars was such that big players like Airtel lost billions of rupees in market capitalization in a matter of weeks, and Aditya Birla’s Idea Payments Bank was forced to merge with Vodafone to stand a chance of survival.

Although many recovered from the early losses and regained lost ground, JIO had undercut the market and regulations needed to be amended to ensure that new entrants could not use a smaller market share to indulge in predatory pricing. On the other hand, the government went to war trying to recover spectrum dues from defunct telecom companies, effectively hindering the sale of stressed assets with demands of bank guarantees.

CCI: Old dog, new tricks

The Competition Commission of India (CCI) is not unfamiliar with antitrust action, having broken up monopolies and taken punitive measures in conservative sectors like cement and tyre manufacturing. In 2018, the CCI took on a whole different animal – big data. It started by taking on the behemoth Google, fining it a hefty ₹1.36 billion (US$19 million) for unfair business practices in the search market.

The commission decided the matter in a lawsuit from 2012, saying it had found evidence of Google infringing antitrust conduct through unfair search bias. The decision made headlines, and while the Appellate Company Law Tribunal stayed the matter, it directed Google to deposit 10% of the fine while the matter was heard.

A key consideration that legal experts pointed out was the CCI’s grasp of what constituted market dominance, not so much in traditional terms but in the burgeoning digital economy where control over data has a bearing on market position. This factor played out extensively when it came to merger control of one of the biggest deals in the Indian economy – Walmart’s acquisition of e-commerce company Flipkart – and in a recent matter where airlines were charged with cartelization based on a pattern of price fixing through aggregators.

Censorship and fake news

A consultation paper issued by the telecom regulator that proposed to regulate over-the-top content received mixed reactions from legal experts. The regulatory impetus was an offshoot of data privacy concerns, which, in an election year, took on the onus of public responsibility towards curtailing fake news. The censorship of the likes of Netflix and Amazon Prime was not so much targeted at the entertainment industry, with its concerns over royalties and viewer certification, as accountability of platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp, which maintain deniability on a perceived lack of regulation of content being circulated by users.

Tech companies responded to myriad concerns over accountability by launching public information campaigns aimed at educating users about responsible use of social media platforms, even as the growing trend towards monetization through targeted advertising on instant messaging platforms undermined some of the core tenets of privacy.

Aman Abbas is the founder and Anant ghuge is a manager at Commwiser Consultants.

After leading Corporate Communications for KPMG in India, Aman Abbas, who has spent close to two decades in the communications domain, has announced the launch of specialist communications firm, Commwiser.

The focus of the firm will be on professional services and technology sectors. The services portfolio being offered by Commwiser includes strategic counsel, media relations, market research, digital and social media integration and stakeholder mapping and engagement.

Commenting on the launch of his new venture, Abbas said, “The professional services sector in India is one of the fastest growing sectors and ranges across domains including, Accounting, Legal, Consulting, Financial, Human Capital, Technology and more. That along with my passion for the technology sector will allow ‘Commwiser’ to offer specialist knowledge and services to this sector.”

Commwiser is being funded by Aman Abbas in his personal capacity and ‘Strategic Partners Group’, which operates specialist brands ‘SPAG, D Yellow Elephant and Giga Health’ across Asia-Pacific.

“Commwiser has chosen a path that is at the interplay of strategy and execution excellence. We would be able to provide not just a strategic advisory role but also take up the responsibility of execution and defined impact of the campaign,” added Abbas.

Abbas has close to two decades of experience in working with some of the best brands in Professional Services space. He led Corporate Communications for KPMG in India, led the Deloitte account from 2020 MSL and headed the Strategy function, and set up and headed the Client & Market Development department at India’s leading law firm Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas. He has also worked with brands like Google in the technology space. He is a recipient of the Corporate Excellence Award by IPE and has been a jury member for awards such as the Enactus Awards for Social Entrepreneurship.

Speaking about the new venture, Aman Gupta, Founder, Strategic Partners Group added, “We have always believed in the need for a specialist agency for different sectors and Aman Abbas brings on board a wealth of experience in both Professional Services and Technology space. Clients love him for the passion he shares for their business and as a result, he has had long-standing client relationships.”