MSN FREAK: Lakewood Malls CEO Sushil Dungarwal loves MSN's emoticons

Vineet Nayyar, the 42-year-old CEO of HCL Comnet is that strange breed: a tech CEO who hates two of tech's most visible manifestations, mobile phones and e-mail. E-mail, he argues, has stopped people from thinking. Not surprisingly HCL Comnet is a no-e-mail zone: all mail, internal and external is blacked (or more appropriately, blocked) out. But what of clients, or potential ones that wish to contact the organisation through mail? Well, senior execs, like Nayyar himself, are exempt from the rule, (Égalite, where are you?) and the sales team can access e-mail after 4.00 p.m. everyday.

Nayyar and his colleagues communicate with each other using an intranet-based chat system called Knockout. "I found that with e-mail, the employees were always locked to their workstations. If a meeting had to be organised, nearly 50 correspondences took place and if someone wanted a small change in the timing, another 100 mails flew out," says the man.

Nayyar's distaste of e-mail extends out of work too, where the Yahoo Messenger is the easiest way to catch up with him. Several of his friends from his XLRI days (class of 1985) are on his buddy list which numbers 200. "At least 5-10 of them are logged on at any time," he says.

Sameer Koticha, Executive Director at Mumbai-based brokerage ASK Raymond James, is a Yahoo Messenger junkie too, and he puts it to good use for official purposes. At work, all 15 senior execs at the brokerage are always logged on. "Messenger speeds up the communication process tremendously," says Koticha. And speed does matter if you're dealing with stocks. Still, Koticha belongs to the minority of instant messaging fans that uses an internet-based public messenger for communicating@work. Among this minority is R.K. Saboo, Deputy Managing Director of First Flight Couriers, an msn Messenger fan who has managed to convince his employees that it's a personal, yet economical way of keeping in touch with customers within the country and without.

The majority prefers intranet-based messengers or chat engines their companies have developed. Anand Sudarshan is one such. The 42-year-old CEO of Netkraft, a Bangalore-based software company, prefers a chat platform called Jabber that the company has developed. He uses it to interact with over a 100 employees of his working onsite in the US and Europe. And he's almost always logged on to the msn Messenger service, which he uses for rapid chats with old pals who are CEOs and senior execs to discuss, amongst other things, business. "There have been instances where I've helped my friends arrive at the right valuation for acquisitions they were working on," grins Sudarshan.

Susil Dungarwal, CEO, Lakewood Malls Pvt. Ltd., the retail venture of the Mumbai-based Hiranandani Group, is by his own admission an msn instant messenger freak. He prefers the company's internal messenger while at office, but when on the road (and that's 15 days a month) it is good old msn Messenger he turns to. And the emoticons (it allows you display emotions) feature fascinates him. "They help convey the mood and message in the fast and precise manner," he says. And as Agnel Victor, Vice President (HR) at Kotak Securities, points out some instant messengers are compatible with mobile phones. For tech jocks that's something like the best of two worlds at once.

-By T.R. Vivek and Dipayan Baishya

HEALTH NOTES
Karoshi, Anyone?

Fine, death from overwork (Karoshi in Japanese, for where else but in a nation of salarymen could such a term have originated?) doesn't feature on our list, but here are the 10 most common executive ailments directly arising from today's high-stress work environments

Hypertension: Temper on a hair-trigger? Smallest mistake by one of your direct reports enough to upset you? Congratulations, you are the proud owner of a blood pressure (BP) gone wild. "Stress at work leads to high BP in most execs," says Dr. Uday Khanolkar, a cardiologist at Bangalore's Sagar Apollo Hospital. "It's simply the result of not keeping one's cool when the work is demanding." The result: heart attacks.

Stress-induced headache: Ever wondered why you always seem to have a headache? Blame it on the Big S, says Dr. Sridhar Peddy, a cardiologist at Hyderabad's Apollo Hospital. "Tension headaches happen when you feel incapable of handling too much work; fear of failure forces you to be too hard on yourself."

Migraine: True, no one knows what really causes a migraine, leave alone have a cure for it. However stress, anger, smoking, and lack of sleep could act as triggers.

Neck pain: Working on the computer for too much time at one stretch can be a real pain in the neck. "Although this ailment is common among software professionals and those who work on the computer, it isn't restricted to them," says Khanolkar. "People who sit in their chairs all day long in the wrong posture are as prone."

Hyperlipidimia: Nope, this has nothing to do with libido; instead, it has everything to do with fat. Eating junk food is a natural human response to combatting stress. Unfortunately, this results in fat deposits building up in blood vessels, lower energy levels, and possible heart disease.

Coronary Artery Diseases (CAD): Stress and an unhealthy diet (face it, most execs eat dumb) combine to cause cad. All those long hours spent meeting impossible deadlines ("let's get some pizza in, we have to finish this today") could one day cause atypical chest pain (ACP), and arteriosclerosis.

Diabetes: Once attributed exclusively to errant genes, new studies indicate that unhealthy lifestyles (including stress) in anyone over 35 could cause diabetes.

Acid Peptic Diseases (APD): A micro-organism, heliobacter pylori, is the cause of APD, but execs have found a way around this one. Most pop pills (aspirin is the most common) to combat headaches, and painkillers such as aspirin, ibuprofen, and naproxen promote ulcers.

Gastro-esophageal Reflux Disease (GERD): A kind of APD, gerd causes inflammation and bleeding of the stomach and oesophagus leading to difficulty in eating and swallowing, pneumonia, hiccups, and involuntary movements of the head and neck. "Surely, all those hours spent on an empty stomach because you had to finish that presentation were bound to take their toll," says Peddy.

Addiction: Coffee, tea, cigarettes, the routine post-work sundowner... need we say more?

-Ananya Roy

HEALTH SNIPPETS

DON'T SNEEZE. SMILE!
Research at the Carnegie Mellon University has shown that happy people are less likely to catch a cold. Writing in a recent issue of Psychosomatic Medicine researcher Sheldon Cohen says "study participants with a positive emotional style weren't infected as often and experienced fewer symptoms compared to people with a negative emotional style". Go ahead, be happy.

WONDER C
Here's more on ascorbic acid, that wonder vitamin commonly tagged with the letter C. Recent studies show that diets rich in Vitamin C reduce the risk of strokes and ulcers. Given that the vitamin helps build immunity to colds, this makes it truly versatile. What's next, we wonder?