Chapter 34

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“By the way, do we have Internet access here?” Arjun asked eagerly

“Oh yes. Every team has one connection to internet. The computer in that corner is connected to a modem that will help you access internet. We are supposed to get 9.8 kbps connection. But often the connection sucks. If you are working late in the evening you may get a better connection.”

“Do you have an email account?” Arjun aske

“I have got myself an account in Hotmail which is a site allowing free email account. Earlier we had to use the email service of Sprint. They used to charge one Rups per mail for both receiving and sending with a max cap of 100 kb per mail. If you sent some heavy mail, you had it. Once we tried to send a 2 mb word file to our head office and we got a bill of Rs 20,000. The worse thing is that the file never reached our HO”

“My God! How expensive is Hotmail?”

“Oh it is free.”

“Really, I have never used it. When I read about it recently I really did not believe it. I felt that there was some catch.”

“As of now there is no catch. May be this is a promotional offer and they will charge sometime in future. Till then, enjoy”

“Do you use internet quite often?”

“I browse around a bit. Sometime I get some useful stuff relating to our work”

“How do you figure out what is available over the net? Do you go to some specific sites put up by specific institutions?”

“There are some nice utilities like Gopher that would help track down relevant documents. But with increasing adoption of www using HTTP and launch of “Yahoo” has changed the way we use Internet. Yahoo has made available a large compilation of links organised in an orderly fashion that help to search and track a large collection of relevant information.”

“That is great. When we were in the institute we used computer room for games and assignments. We hardly used internet for any meaningful research”

“Come let us go for lunch. We get a fabulous lunch in our cafeteria. It is even free”

“Ya, We need to eat. After that I have to meet up with JS” Arjun said aloud

They walked together to the café.

“Wow the Café is really impressive and the buffet appears quite elaborate. How much do they charge?” Arjun observed

“Oh the charge is really nominal. It is only Rups 10 per meal” Praveen replied

Together they walked towards the buffet table.

Arjun picked up some salad and very little rice. He preferred to have larger portion of the non-veg dishes that were available.

“Looks like you are an absolute carnivorous” Praveen commented

“I don’t waste my stomach space with grass” Arjun laughed

Praveen walked towards a table that was occupied only by one girl. She was quite a looker. Arjun followed Praveen. Praveen took the chair adjacent to the girl and Arjun took the opposite chair to Praveen and not to the girl. There was element of shyness in Arjun when it comes to girls when he meets them for the first time.

“Lekha, meet Arjun our new colleague at SDAP. Arjun meet Lekha our legal whiz kid”

“You mean Lekha Kurup?” Arjun asked as he wanted to be sure

“Exactly, This is she” Praveen replied with a laugh

“How did you know my name?” Lekha asked

“Oh Praveen was explaining his project and he mentioned about you” Arjun replied

“Hope that is all he said” Lekha replied with a mock seriousness

“Did you expect him say anything more? Like a daring adventure or a juicy scandal.” Arjun responded with a naughty smile

“Praveen loves to sensationalize anything. So just for impact he would make up stories. Though he means no harm and will ensure that they don’t end up being rumours.” Lekha replied with a smile. Her eyes darted towards Praveen and Praveen gave an acknowledging nod. To Arjun there appeared to be a connect among the two.

“Lekha is a law graduate from Harvard Law School. She joined DI in USA from campus and agreed to take a posting to Indrapuram office. As she is a US citizen and has relocated to Indrapuram, she even get a distress allowance” Praveen said

“Don’t be jealous Praveen” Lekha responded

“I am not jealous my sweet heart. I am just explaining your pedigree to our new friend”
There was quite a lot of banter at the table and they finished their lunch in 20 minutes

“Arjun, How about joining me for a smoke?” Praveen asked

“I was wondering if there would be a smoking partner. Good where do we smoke?” Arjun asked

“We can smoke in the office. There is no restriction. But I prefer to walk down for a smoke after lunch” Praveen replied

“I was wondering. The restriction on smoking is increasing these days. The year we joined IMI, smoking was banned in the class. I remember oru Eco prof announcing it on the first day of his class. ‘Guys as per the new rules, not smoking in the class. I will adhere to this rule and I hope you would do so too”

“I see. We could smoke in the class till we graduated” Praveen said.

“Ok a let us run along. I need to meet JS in 15 mts”

“That is true. You should go an mark your attendance with his secy at the specified time. When he gets free he will call you. Sometimes he will get caught in some discussion and you may end up waiting for quite some time”

They finished their smoke and walked back to their office. Praveen got busy in his work. Arjun walked over to JS’s room. 

Chapter 33

Arjun sat down at his seat and looked around. He felt proud about the plush environment.

“What a change of scene compared to office of Tridevpur Auto to  DI; but then it is a production house unlike DI which is a multinational consulting firm. I wonder what will be the future of Tridevpur Auto. It seemed to be frozen in past with no strategies to survive in future. May be DI could help them in formulating an innovative strategy for future” He mused

“Hi Praveen” Arjun called softly to catch Praveen’s attention.

“Yes my friend” Praveen replied and rolled his chair towards Arjun.

“I thought I could get to know you a bit if you are free” Arjun said hesitantly with a smile.

“Cool. I have been at this since morning and I don’t mind a break” Praveen replied

“What are you working on?” Arjun asked

“DI has been engaged by a consortium of bankers to develop a rehabilitation package for a cement company. I am a part of the team.”

“OH. But that would require engineering expertise too. Isn’t it?” Arjun asked

“Yes you are correct. We are working on it as a consortium with an engineering consulting firm. We are handling the financial and legal restructuring. I am handling the finance side and we have Lekha Kurup handling the legal side. I will introduce her one of these days. She also lives in the guest house.” Praveen replied

“How about you? Where do you stay?” Arjun asked

“I stay at the guest house too. All unmarried officers without a family here in Indrapuram are free to live in the guest house as long as they want” Praveen replied

“Oh that is great. I did not know about this. I thought this will be only a temp arrangement for newcomers like me.”

“Now you know.” Praveen smiled with a wink

“OH coming back to your assignment, tell me more.”

“Coming back to One of my assignments!” He stressed the word “One” in his reply

“Do you handle multiple assignments at a time”  Arjun asked

“That is the beauty of consulting. In our business we sell our time and what we do in this time is the output that our client buys. If I look at it cynically we are like whores and our bosses ie partners are like pimps selling our time.” Praveen said with a laugh

“We have to ensure that at our levels at least 85% of our time is in billable assignments. That means we are not supposed to have free time! Therefore we could be booked in multiple assignments and we could be spending 12 to 14 hours in office or client site.” Praveen continued

“But if you are expected to do 85% utilisation then why are you working 150% time.” Arjun asked

“”To finish the work you are supposed to finish with 85% utilisation often we will need twice the time.”

“This means that you are either working on poor efficiency or you have underestimated effort”

“Now you are learning. To be competitive you have to quote your prices competitively. We manage this by underestimating numbers instead of discounting our rates. This means that you have to sweat it out extra in the evening and on holidays to finish you work. We are in the business of making money. When we are paying you a nice salary, we own you my dear son”

“I think you are being cynical”

“You have just started out. When you complete six months we will discuss this again”

“Ok. Now come back to your rehabilitation story. Why is this company sick? Most cement companies are making money; especially with the government policy of controlling cement production and sale. I still remember the pains I had to go through to get cement few years ago when we were building a small house. We had to jump through multiple hoops of approvals and had to visit the government office a number of times to get our allocation. Finally when our allocated cement was over and we had to get few more sacks to finish our work, we had to buy from the black market at three times the stated price ” Arjun remarked with surprise.

“You are right. But many promoters have multiple tricks to make more money which is a standard operating procedure in case of most of the industrial investments in Indraprasta where everything is controlled by the Government. The promoter as in the case of most industrial investments, first managed to get his license through his political connections. Then he approached banks for project funding. As per the project report he submitted to the banks the project cost was five billion Indraprasta Rups whereas the real cost is only 4 billion Rups. Again with the right connections he managed a loan of 70%.This means that in reality he had to contribute only 0.5 billion. Later when the goods were sold he used to skim a certain part of the sales value as cash in his name. So he recovered more than he spent.” Praveen explained

“Oh that is smart. But how come the company is in a loss”

“The implementation and running of the plant was also not efficient because he used to divert significant funds and let the real expenditure needed in the plant to suffer. Eventually losses mounted and he is out of funds for the day-to-day running of the company. Now he has approached the lending banks with a request to reschedule the loan. He wants to bankroll his inefficiency by bank loans. He has already managed to get an unsecured loan for working capital from the banks. The bankers are in a soup. They now want to figure out how bring this company back in track so that they recover their money. For this they will have to save the company from the clutches of the promoter and get some semblance of professional management with proper financial controls in place”

“What will happen to the founder?”

“He will enjoy the funds he has diverted. He has a tidy sum that he has squirrelled away in Switzerland through over invoicing of imports. He is trying hard not to get caught in a bind which will force him to return the monies he has siphoned off”

“How come the bank gave un-secured loans?”

“If you borrow from the bank money to buy a bike and you delay payment, they will come after you and confiscate your bike. But if you are a big businessman borrowing 5 billion and you mess up they will come begging to you”

“What are we doing in this case?”

“We, in consortium with an Engineering Consulting firm, are developing the total rehab package. The engineering consulting firm will recommend the modifications and additions to extract the full efficiency of the plant. We will suggest changes required in the management processes and the financial controls required that need to be established” Praveen explained

“Brilliant. I hope that the new government that has come in will do something about reforming the economy; like bringing more competition and better discipline in corporate governance”

“I hope so too”