Bollywood @ Pravasi Bharatiya Divas: Surely, a tinsel-lure can reel in all those NRI greenbacks, or can it?

They descended upon New Delhi in strength- some 1,200 of them from 40 countries. They grilled our politicians, danced with our film stars, looked up long-lost family, and networked amongst themselves.

And then, when it was all over, they went back.

The Indian government sponsored Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (Non-Resident Indian Day)-the State spent around Rs 12 crore on the three-day event-was a pleasant diversion for NRIs. And New Delhi's expectation that striking the right nationalistic chord with the 20-million strong Indian Diaspora would open up the floodgates of NRI-investment remained just that, a possibility and (we can't resist getting semantic with math here) one with very low probability.

Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was there, as was his deputy L.K. Advani, Finance Minister Jaswant Singh, and a clutch of other heavies, manifestations of the great Indian hope that NRIs, like the overseas Chinese would pump greenbacks into the motherland, transforming it into a global economic powerhouse. Commerce-Minister-in-absence Murasoli Maran's futile experiments to create China-style Special Economic Zones should have warned the government about blindly aping the country, but money, especially the dollar variety, apart from making the world go round, also makes everyone blind to everything else. And so, buoyed by a report prepared by the ever-sanguine L.M. Singhvi, India's former ambassador to the UK, that estimates overseas Chinese have invested close to $40 billion (Rs 1,92,000 crore) in China since 1995, the government plunged ahead with its show.

Pravasi... will likely not fetch the returns expected of it, or anywhere close to it. China succeeded in attracting investments from overseas Chinese on the basis of policies that made it attractive for foreign companies to invest in the country. "India will have to undertake major political, administrative, and judicial reforms," explains Sam Pitroda, Chairman, World Tel, "if it wants to tap its NRI network like China did." The cold calculus of business doesn't recognise sentiment: to expect NRIs to invest in India simply because it is their country of origin is downright stupid; the community will invest in the country if the risk-reward equation is favourable. If it isn't, they'll seek better avenues. "The investment climate is just not there in India," sums up Pitroda, "but it is changing for the better."

Hong Kong's Hari N. Harilela is unwilling to give the country-it has just honoured him with a Pravasi Bharatiya Samman award, presumably as a sweetener-even that. "I have been struggling to enter the Indian market,'' says the 77-year-old hotel magnate who runs a $1-billion business, "but the red tape has always posed a hurdle." "If you want to do something in China it can be done within a week; in India it takes a couple of months, if not a couple of years.''

Still, retrograde policies aren't the only reason why India will find it far more difficult than its neighbour to the north to attract investments from its own. There's history for one. When the Communists came to power in China, the rich fled. They flourished in other parts of the world and were ready to shower their munificence once it was clear that China was not opposed to capitalism. India's first wave of people-exports took the form of migrant labour. "The rich Non-Resident Indian entrepreneur is still a relatively recent phenomenon," says Aman Mehta, CEO, HSBC Bank. "It will take some time before the genus starts investing in India.'' Even then, cautions Mehta, "poor quality infrastructure, inadequate regulations, inflexible labour laws, and inefficient administration could pose a deterrent."

The refrain from NRI Inc is predictable: don't give us special privileges; overhaul existing policies to make investments, not just by NRIs but others too, easy. Karan Bilimoria, CEO of the $50-million (Rs 240 crore) Cobra Beer Ltd, has been working to open a brewery in Hyderabad these past seven months. "I don't want any special favours," he complains, "just a conducive environment for business." In the final reckoning, India's inability to provide that may mean NRI money remains where it does its possessors the most good, outside India.

-Ashish Gupta

STATIC
The Big Five
Five things that could hamstring Indian telecom in 2003.

The I factor: Interconnect, the ability of networks to connect with each other, remains an issue with companies using it as a bargaining tool and an entry barrier to competition.

When will the Verma turn: No one quite knows when the telecom regulator, and its Chairman M.S. Verma will get down to ensuring free and fair competition.

The Big M: Growth requires capital investment. Falling revenues per user, the state of D-street, and a 49 per cent cap on foreign investment mean equity is out.

Policy Blues: The telecom minister's musings on the number of operators per circle, a new licence fee regime, and a unified licence ensure that things remain fluid and ambiguous.

Us & Them: Fine, BSNL is a corporate entity but it and twin MTNL seem to benefit most from most policy decisions; the government owns and runs both, you see.

-Vandana Gombar

KLEINONOMICS
When Good Firms Don't Get The Right Logos
Don't blame the competition or the environment for your company's woes, says a London-based new-age consultant. Blame your company's logo.

Vforsee's Rao: Logo-logic

And we thought Arvind Mills' woes had to do with its decision to increase denim capacity at a time when the world was going cold on the fabric. Now we are told-by astro-vaastu consultant Ravi Rao-that the real culprit was its logo. Rao, whose company Vforsee (its phonetic stupid) provides a touchy-feely Feng Shui meets brand management kind of service to companies that want to get their logo right. "Do that and your business will flourish," says Rao. His logic: a harmonious-his word, not ours-logo maximises the brand's energy; the colour indicates life and health of the company; and the shape, its performance. Rao brandishes a template that seems to owe more to retro-fitting than any scientific soothsaying ability. Silver, blue and red for auto company logos; blue and green for banks; blue and red for telcos; blue for infotech companies; and yellow, blue, and red for entertainment and media firms. Green and pink, explains Rao, offering some empirical evidence, block energy and two airlines with these colours in their logo-NEPC and East West-were grounded. And Thums Up, he adds, has done well after some blue was injected into its logo. "Altering or fine-tuning the logo, according to astro-vaastu principles, will swing the company's fortunes for the better." A company's logo, its date of incorporation, its first trade, the industry in which it operates, and planetary activity, when seen together boasts Rao, give a glimpse of its past, present, and future. His favourite logos: Microsoft, Mercedes Benz, and HSBC. They rock, but is it because of a-v?

-Roshni Jayakar

ONEUPMANSHIP
A Master Arbitrageur's Play
A southern entrepreneur takes a leaf out of Reliance Infocomm's combative pricing strategy and hopes to do one better. But will customers bite?

RIL's Mukesh Ambani (L) and Aircel's C 'Siva' Sivasankaran: The Price Players

Sentiment, goes the buzz in the telecom industry, not business logic was behind Reliance Infocomm's December 28 (it was the 70th birth anniversary of patriarch Dhirubhai Ambani) launch. And even as the company is striving to iron out the kinks in its marketing system and raise an estimated Rs 10,000 crore from bookings, a southern entrepreneur has gone ahead and unveiled a customer package that is one better.

The man is C. Sivasankaran, aka Siva, and he is variously known for being the first to launch inexpensive PCs in India way back in the late 1980s (Siva pc was the brand), buying a bankrupt M.C. Hammer's Fremont ranch in the mid-1990s, or being right in the middle of the battle for the control of Tamil Nadu Mercantile Bank. Siva, a Fremont-based NRI some of whose acolytes dub him "the southern Ambani", owns and runs telco Aircel that offers cellular services in the Tamil Nadu circle. The company recently announced that in return for an upfront payment of Rs 19,500, subscribers could avail 1,200 minutes of free outgoing airtime a month for the next five years; all incoming calls, it further announced, would be free and customers exceeding their quota would be charged a nominal Rs 1.20 for a three-minute call. Siva's masterstroke: subscribers will receive, at the end of the five-year period, a maximum of Rs 20,400 in cash, calculated on the basis of a rather complex mathematical formula. "I want to make people talk," says Siva. "The more they talk, the more I reward.''

Aircel has 2.35 lakh subscribers in Tamil Nadu, a marketshare of 50 per cent, average talk-time of 800 minutes, the highest for any telco in India, and made a net profit of Rs 40 crore in 2001-02-a success that can be largely attributed to Siva's decision to match bsnl's fixed-line tariff of Rs 1.20 for a three-minute call. "We made good money last year and would like to pass some on to our customers," says Siva striking a populist note. The competition isn't impressed. "It remains to be seen if customers can be tied down for five years," says Subir Ghosh, Deputy Chief Operating Officer of BPL Cellular Ltd, one of Aircel's competitors. The southern Ambani thinks they can.

-Nitya Varadarajan