A red-letter day

Today is a truly historic day. Never before has the world looked at Indian business with so much hope, awe and delight. Today TATA motors launched its famed ' 1 Lakh car'. Christened as 'Nano', this 33bhp hatchback with a 624cc engine, is priced half that of the current cheapest car in the market. According to information supplied by the company, Nano has a lower overall pollution level than two-wheelers made in India and the higher fuel efficiency (20 km/litre) ensured low carbon dioxide emissions.

Indian car sales are predicted to more than quadruple to $145bn by 2016. Tata will initially make about 250,000 Nanos and expects eventual annual demand of one million cars. This breakthrough product will surely find buyers in many other markets, including the developed markets for a higher version even if it were to cost $5000 - 6000. Coming to think of it, this fits exactly with the idea of how radical constraints can lead to breakthroughs in simplicity and entirely new solutions, which i had covered in my earlier post on Evan Williams

Are we therefore at times limited only by our thought? ...

My salute to everyone at Tata Motors who made this possible.

Nokia's Big Plans for India

Nokia is an unusual example of a business leader in the sense that it's origins do not lie in the usual suspect countries of US, UK, Japan, Germany, Italy, France etc. nor in the Asian tigers.

For a company, which has its roots in paper, rubber and cables to become a giant in the field of technology and communications is a quantum leap. In 2005 Nokia sold its billionth phone when worldwide mobile phone subscriptions had passed the 2 billion mark.

India recently displaced the US as Nokia's second largest market behind China and this event has many ramifications (It seems Apple has refused to learn from this, it is yet to launch it's i-Phone in India or the other Asian markets and says it would be at least another year when that happens). In this interesting interview, the CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, while on his trip to India, speaks to Business Week on this tectonic change, how Nokia is gearing to benefit from it and how its next billion phones are going to be sold.