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Vision India 2020
Product call to Indian entrepreneurs everywhere, Vision India 2020 challenges and inspires readers to build the future now. In this “futuristic retrospective,” author Sramana Mitra shows how over the next decade, start-up companies in India could be turned into billion-dollar enterprises. Vision India 2020, which encompasses a wide range of sectors from technology to infrastructure, healthcare to education, environmental issues to entertainment, proves how even the most sizeable problems can be solved by exercising bold, ambitious measures. Renowned in the business world, author Sramana Mitra conceived Vision India 2020 from her years of experience as a Silicon Valley strategy consultant and entrepreneur. Well aware of the challenges facing today’s aspiring entrepreneurs, Mitra provides strategies, business models, references, and comparables as a guide to help entrepreneurs manifest their own world-changing ideas.From the Back years from now, India stands to be the world leader in everything from technology innovation to state-of-the-art railways, solar energy to film animation. But these opportunities are in the hands of today’s entrepreneurs.Vision India 2020 invites aspiring entrepreneurs to take a journey into the future and back again through a “futuristic retrospective.”Throughout this revolutionary business fiction, renowned strategy consultant and entrepreneur Sramana Mitra explores forty-five possible business ventures set to forever change the face of India. In her call to visionary entrepreneurs everywhere, Mitra incorporates real-life scenarios, strategies, and business models to show how daring ideas can turn into billion-dollar enterprises.
257 pages, Kindle Edition
First published February 1, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 20, 2014
India from future to the back, and into the future; a futuristic retrospective from 2020 to 2010
This is a tale of high hopes and not-so-new ideas for entrepreneurs interested in investing in India. In this book of business fiction, the author discusses about 45 possible business ventures in the areas of technology based services, investments in infrastructure, rural and slum development, healthcare services, entertainment industry, and food and hotel industries. The reader must be cautious since the book is supposed to be in 2020 and prior years (2020 to 2010) are referred to in the past sentence with sound investments and healthy dividends. The revenues, gross margins and percentages are fictional numbers and no basis is provided as how the author arrived at these figures.
One of the sound strategies for writing on investments that uses economic and accounting concepts is that it must be supported by real numbers or forecasted numbers based on real numbers. Facts with numbers speak louder than high hopes and retrospectives filled with sweet dreams. Examples include the following: With respect to a fictional teaching methodology called "Lucid" developed for K-12 students; "we became so well known as effective K-12 teaching methodology by 2018 that the Gates Foundation came to fund a rollout of our methodology into poorer schools....." Our "operating margin of 29% against revenue of $5.6 billion - a world leader in educational technology." With respect Taxonomy, a fictional software product company, "we grew $30 million in 2012, $240 million in 2015...and $1.2 billion in 2020." I did not take time to itemize all the fictional companies and their growths illustrated by imaginary numbers.
India is still far behind its main competitor China in exporting technology & business, and in GDP growth. India is supposed to be a software superpower but rests solely on outsourcing, which suggests that a great deal of work needs to be done. The author concludes that billions of dollars of GDP are in line, unregistered by public, and it is the entrepreneur alone can register that with reconstruction of sound markets. It is true that the India has tremendous potential and untapped energy that could be put into positive use and churn that GDP machine, but sound economic policies, economic fair play at the international level, addressing global warming that is affecting rising water in Indian Ocean, extensive deforestation, etc., threat of heightened Islamic terrorism and the looming war with the hostile Islamic neighbor, and with the communist power to the North are also important in determining the economic gain. Jonathan Holslag, a Brussels-based expert of Chinese foreign policy and author of the recent book "China and India: Prospects for Peace," is among a growing number of observers who have dismissed the idea of "Chindia" -- a term used to express optimism over the joint geopolitical rise of the two Asian giants. He observed in an interview with Time magazine that fault lines between the two neighbors can grow bigger and tensions could escalate into war. Another fact that is not in favor of India is a study published by Gartner, Inc., an information technology research and advisory firm indicates that countries like Malaysia, Philippines, and Vietnam are positioning themselves as credible alternatives with considerable investments to challenge the monopoly of India and China in IT Offshore and Business process outsourcing (BPO) Services. On the other hand there are positive signs in favor of India with changing political climate to the North of the border. Recently, the computer technology giant Dell has joined Google in fleeing China in search of a safer environment with a climate conducive to enterprise, potentially taking the $25 billion it spends on equipment and parts in China to India. The Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, was quoted in the Hindustan Times as saying he'd just met with Dell's chairman, who would like to move all of their set-up to a country "with security of legal system."
This is a tale of high hopes and not-so-new ideas for entrepreneurs interested in investing in India. In this book of business fiction, the author discusses about 45 possible business ventures in the areas of technology based services, investments in infrastructure, rural and slum development, healthcare services, entertainment industry, and food and hotel industries. The reader must be cautious since the book is supposed to be in 2020 and prior years (2020 to 2010) are referred to in the past sentence with sound investments and healthy dividends. The revenues, gross margins and percentages are fictional numbers and no basis is provided as how the author arrived at these figures.
One of the sound strategies for writing on investments that uses economic and accounting concepts is that it must be supported by real numbers or forecasted numbers based on real numbers. Facts with numbers speak louder than high hopes and retrospectives filled with sweet dreams. Examples include the following: With respect to a fictional teaching methodology called "Lucid" developed for K-12 students; "we became so well known as effective K-12 teaching methodology by 2018 that the Gates Foundation came to fund a rollout of our methodology into poorer schools....." Our "operating margin of 29% against revenue of $5.6 billion - a world leader in educational technology." With respect Taxonomy, a fictional software product company, "we grew $30 million in 2012, $240 million in 2015...and $1.2 billion in 2020." I did not take time to itemize all the fictional companies and their growths illustrated by imaginary numbers.
India is still far behind its main competitor China in exporting technology & business, and in GDP growth. India is supposed to be a software superpower but rests solely on outsourcing, which suggests that a great deal of work needs to be done. The author concludes that billions of dollars of GDP are in line, unregistered by public, and it is the entrepreneur alone can register that with reconstruction of sound markets. It is true that the India has tremendous potential and untapped energy that could be put into positive use and churn that GDP machine, but sound economic policies, economic fair play at the international level, addressing global warming that is affecting rising water in Indian Ocean, extensive deforestation, etc., threat of heightened Islamic terrorism and the looming war with the hostile Islamic neighbor, and with the communist power to the North are also important in determining the economic gain. Jonathan Holslag, a Brussels-based expert of Chinese foreign policy and author of the recent book "China and India: Prospects for Peace," is among a growing number of observers who have dismissed the idea of "Chindia" -- a term used to express optimism over the joint geopolitical rise of the two Asian giants. He observed in an interview with Time magazine that fault lines between the two neighbors can grow bigger and tensions could escalate into war. Another fact that is not in favor of India is a study published by Gartner, Inc., an information technology research and advisory firm indicates that countries like Malaysia, Philippines, and Vietnam are positioning themselves as credible alternatives with considerable investments to challenge the monopoly of India and China in IT Offshore and Business process outsourcing (BPO) Services. On the other hand there are positive signs in favor of India with changing political climate to the North of the border. Recently, the computer technology giant Dell has joined Google in fleeing China in search of a safer environment with a climate conducive to enterprise, potentially taking the $25 billion it spends on equipment and parts in China to India. The Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, was quoted in the Hindustan Times as saying he'd just met with Dell's chairman, who would like to move all of their set-up to a country "with security of legal system."
March 5, 2010
Even though they are fictional, most ideas projected by this book are really doable and it is clear that a lot of research has been put into the possibilities. Really liked the bit about the future of solar power in India and her ideas about it because I'm currently involved in something really similar. (it actually gave me the goosebumps as to how similar her idea was to what I'm trying to implement). A great-read for pioneers and innovators and people who want to venture into one of the largest markets in the world right now.
September 27, 2016
The author deserves an applause, if just for the reason that she dares to dream and believe in the entrepreneurial transformation of India. The numerous ideas she shares, although ill-formed, extremely ambitious and bordering naivete at times, are enough to plant the seed of imagination in a crazy entrepreneur's mind. There are some interesting insights interspersed with the stories that are set in the India of the future.
February 2, 2011
Maybe I need to be in India to appreciate it. Or maybe I went into the book with too high an expectation. But I didnt enjoy reading it at all.
It's just a whole bunch of fictitious "article-like stories" of companies that don't even exist yet. I think there's a difference between imparting vision and just imparting fantasies.
It's just a whole bunch of fictitious "article-like stories" of companies that don't even exist yet. I think there's a difference between imparting vision and just imparting fantasies.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews