Transforming young lives

Bhagwan Sahay Khatik from Amaranar village in Rajasthan’s Jaipur district is 50 but looks 60. Years of grazing his goats in the rocky terrain have left his face deeply wrinkled. “But now that my son Vikky has got a good job, I will retire,” he smiles. Vikky, all of 19, completed a 12-week course at the ICICI Academy of Skills in Jaipur last month, and has got a job that pays ₹7,000 a month.

For his mother, more important was the fact that for the 12 weeks Vikky “never slept on a hungry stomach”. At home the staple diet was roti and chillies.

 

Wholesome food

The 150-odd youngsters get much more than food at the Academy which aims to find sustainable livelihood for the youth. After opening in 2013 in Jaipur, the Academy has six branches in Hyderabad, Chennai, Bangalore, Coimbatore, Pune, Kolhapur while two more, at Patna and Guwahati, will be ready by March. Together they will train about 5,000 youth every year.

The curriculum has been designed with NIIT, Blue Star, Schneider Electrical, Tally and Crompton Greaves, which have also helped set up classrooms and labs. The technical stream students get hostel facility. The 12-week course offers six skills — electrical, motor and pump repair; refrigeration and AC (RAC) maintenance; selling/marketing skills; web designing, and office administration (this covers basics of accounting, banking, filing papers, etc). The last is in great demand in the SME sector.

 

Focus on grooming, discipline

Along with the training in their chosen vocation, there is also focus on teaching them discipline and grooming. “In the first two weeks, we train them in good behaviour, how to talk to the customer and respect what he/she says. Because you come from deprivation, it does not give you the right to talk rudely to anybody, we tell them,” says a teacher. The resident children have to get up by 6 am, bathe, shave, dress neatly, go for breakfast by 7 and report to class at 8.

The wholesome vegetarian food served in the hostel provides youngsters from poorer families the much required nutrition. Within a week they look healthier, and the grooming brings about a metamorphosis. Some elementary English is taught too.

Nobody is refused admission; the mantra is that given the right environment and opportunity, everybody can be an achiever. The poorer students seek technical skills, the better off office administration and web designing. The latter, day scholars from Jaipur, have degree which have failed to get them jobs.

 

Gender divide

The gender divide is along expected lines; the boys prefer technical courses, the girls opt for web designing, office administration. But in Coimbatore, six girls have broken the gender barrier. R Kavya, from nearby Pollachi, loved changing bulbs and doing small electrical repairs from childhood and “wanted to do electrical engineering, but my family couldn’t afford the fees.” Now she is a budding electrician.

Chanda Kochhar, MD and CEO, ICICI Bank, says she was heartened by the fact that the girls from the first batch have all taken up jobs and are “participating in the economic process.” Training youth and making them employable “is the only way to take advantage of our demographic dividend,” she says.

For ICICI Bank, this venture is that of being a responsible corporate citizen and ensuring that “opportunities and an enabling environment are created for our youth; that is the only way to take advantage of our demographic dividend.”

 

Placement

All 146 from the first batch in Jaipur have been placed. Both ICICI Bank and its partners leverage their goodwill and dealer networks to find jobs for them. The minimum wage is ₹6,000; those with technical skills get ₹8,000-10,000. RK Sharma, a Blue Star consultant and an RAC instructor, says his distributors have employed seven “and are asking for more. RAC is in demand, and will explode as the cold chains for fruits and vegetables expand. I see these boys earning around Rs 20-25,000 in a few years. Hotels and restaurants also need AC mechanics; an AC restaurant is the norm today."

Manoj Sharma from Shyam Aircon Services, a dealer of Blue Star in Jaipur, confirms this. “We have employed six trainees, and though they have more theoretical than practical knowledge, we don’t have to train them from scratch. Also, they know how to talk politely to customers, which is bonus for us.”

 

Surprisingly, 13 from the first batch of 146 refused to take up jobs; they had experience in their fields and came to the ICICI Academy to hone their skills. The Bank may fund their own ventures.

Hanuman Sahib Bhairwan from Ramjipura village, 40 km from Jaipur, is 19, but on his shoulders rest the responsibility of paying his father’s debts. A marginal farmer with two acres of land, the father doubles up as a daily wage labourer to feed his large family. “The income from land is meagre; there is always water shortage. And I have two brothers and five sisters,” says Hanuman who is training to be an electrician. Four of his sisters are married; the dowry for each was ₹2-3 lakh. “Pitaji ke sar par bahut karz hai (father is heavily in debt). I came here thinking karza utrega toh Pitaji khush hoge.(He will be happy),” he says and wants to help clear the debts.

 

Ashok, 19, is the son of a potter from a village 20 km from Jaipur. Unlike other happy faces, his eyes are sad. He tells his story only after much coaxing. His father makes pots that his mother tries to sell in the nearby villages. The daily income is uncertain, and so is the meal. The story is related dispassionately in a resigned monotone.

 

Divesh Kumar, 20, hails from a Haryana village. His father is a barber and earns less than ₹5,000 a month. Divesh has three siblings and made it to Class 12 with great difficulty. “Khana badiya hai,” he beams, reflecting his circumstances.

 

Most have completed Class 12, but many are in third year of college. Others surprise me by saying they are in third year of college. Captain Amar Singh, who has retired from the Army Aviation wing and trains students on electrical skills, explains: “After their Plus Two, these students enrol for correspondence courses by paying Rs 300. they somehow get a degree, but no education and are hence unemployable.”

 

He also doubles as the hostel warden; sari zindagi machine ke saath guzari, (my whole life was spend with machines), I now love training these children."

But teaching them about circuits is a challenge. “They may pass Class 12, but the standard is much lower. Many can’t even write their names. But hailing from this region, I know how to put things in their heads”.

 

So when explaining resistance, Singh gives the example of the world’s fastest runner Usain Bolt. “I tell them, if we give him a proper track he will run superbly. But if we bring him to the sand dunes of Bikaner, his speed will reduce dramatically because of the uneven surface. So they understand!”

I love most the body language of Gaurav Sharma, seated with his father Hemraj, a carpenter. He has got a job as electrician at a salary of Rs 10,000. “The job is great, but this is only the beginning; I know I will earn much more in the future," he beams.

How 3 Indians turned SAP into a cloud computing major

Six years ago, $23-billion (Rs 1.42 lakh crore) German software major SAP, best known for its business software products (enterprise resource planning or ERP in geekspeak), faced a problem: it was still king in ERP but didn’t have a strong presence on the cloud, which was seen as the future of computing.

Cloud computing is a system of “renting” software over the internet instead of buying it on license. It is cheaper than buying software and, so, is preferred by many firms.

After several brainstorming sessions among senior SAP executives, the company’s chairman H. Plattner and its chief technology officer Vishal Sikka (46), who grew up in Vadodara, decided to venture into the cloud with a database management system (which tracks and analyses massive volumes of data), where SAP had little presence, but with a small twist that proved to be a masterstroke.

The new product was called HANA or high performance analytic appliance, which for a variety of technical innovations, speeded up real-time data analysis by up to 100 times.

Analysts, rivals and even some insiders predicted failure. As recently as September 30, 2012, Oracle CEO and co-founder Larry Ellisson took a dig at HANA, calling it a “small thing.” He had earlier dismissed SAP’s innovation as “wacko”.

But Sikka, who is now being called the father of HANA, had the last laugh. At the end of 2013, the product had about 3,000 customers worldwide, making it the bestseller in its class. Oracle, too, has now adopted this new technology. According to company grapevine, Sikka is now a frontrunner for the post of SAP CEO.

“HANA was the right product, at the right time, at the right price,” said Milan Sheth, an analyst at consultancy firm EY.

Several SAP executives around the world contributed to HANA but the ones who stand out are IIT-Kharagpur alumnus Anirban Dey (41), MD of SAP Labs India and a golf enthusiast, whose team developed the system that programs the database that is to be analysed. And his colleague, Ganapathy Subramanian (36), VP, SAP Labs India, builds applications to make the HANA and other tech platforms more versatile and user-friendly.

Not everyone, however, is impressed. “We cannot term HANA as an exceptional technology,” said an analyst requesting anonymity, as his firm has dealings with SAP.

But for now, Sikka and his team are basking in the glory of HANA’s success

Devi Shetty opens low-cost healthcare venture in Cayman Islands outside US

NEWDELHI: Devi Shetty, the Indian cardiac surgeon renowned for making cutting-edge medical care affordable to the masses, is set to begin his overseas innings this week.

Health City Cayman Islands will start receiving patients this week as the first leg of Shetty's Caribbean venture becomes  operational with a 104-bed multispecialty tertiary hospital.

It cost $70 million to set up. Abig advantage of the Cayman Islands facility is its location: near the American shore, but off the stringent US regulations. Shetty, the founder of Narayana Health (formerly Narayana Hrudayalaya) is awaiting American patients as well. And, he promises to offer top-quality services at lower costs.

The best location to build a hospital on the planet today is a ship that is parked in the US waters just outside its territory," Shetty said. "The site at the Cayman Islands is the closest approximation that fits the bill."

"The healthcare models in the US are considered the ultimate and keenly studied  by the entire world, but the regulatory restrictions in that country are so stifling that innovations in healthcare delivery are very difficult to implement," Shetty told ET.

The entire health-city plan envisages 2,000 beds, a medical university and an assisted-living centre over the next 10 years with a total investment of $2 billion. The British Caribbean territory changed some of its regulations to accommodate Shetty's vision. The most significant was recognising the Indian medical degree and doctors.

"The government of Cayman Islands is the second after the Indian government globally to recognise the Indian medical degrees.

He is already scouting for more suitable locations in the Caribbean region. Narayana Health has an ambition of growing into a 30,000-bed organisation over the next five years.

Currently, it has just over 6,300 beds. Shetty wants one-fourth of its net additions to be overseas. Shetty is in talks with authorities in some European and African countries, pressing them to recognise
Indian doctors and degrees. Until now, that has been his condition for venturing in to overseas projects. But, he believes, if not today, developed countries would have to look at Indian healthcare models in the next seven-eight years to contain costs. "Healthcare is a sticky issue for most countries, even in the developed world, and each one is looking for a solution.

Just. that they are yet to arrive on the brink of desperation and when that happens, Indian models will definitely have a few lessons to offer." Meanwhile, Shetty plans to use the time difference between Western countries and India as an advantage. "Nowhere in the world, patients even in the ICU are attended to by top doctors in the middle of the night, but that would be possible now with senior doctors in our Bangalore hospital connected to the Cayman facility."


While Narayana  Health's overseas foray may be happening only now, according to Shetty his team has been preparing for it for five to seven years. "Cost is our strength and quality is their demand and I knew that a balance would have to be struck as we venture abroad," he said. "Two of our hospitals have been JCI (Joint Commission International) accredited for a few years now. None of our patients ever asked for it but that was our way to understand the needs of the developed world and brace for our journey there," he said.

The organisation keeps a close watch on its financial health. "For instance, at the end of every month, all our top doctors and senior administrators get a detailed account of the financial parameters of
all 27 locations we operate in, and we do a post-mortem of finances," Shettysaid.

"But our investment in best-in class software also ensures that every day afternoon all of them get an SMS on revenue, expenses and other financial indicator for all the locations, which is what we call our diagnostic tool." This helps Narayana Health self-correct on a daily basis.

Forget the Internet - soon there will be the OUTERNET

Company plans to beam free Wi-fi to every person on Earth from space

• An ambitious project known as Outernet is aiming to launch hundreds of miniature satellites into low Earth orbit by June 2015
• Each satellite will broadcast the Internet to phones and computers giving billions of people across the globe free online access
• Citizens of countries like China and North Korea that have censored online activity could be given free and unrestricted cyberspace
• 'There's really nothing that is technically impossible to this'

You might think you have to pay through the nose at the moment to access the Internet.

But one ambitious organisation called the Media Development Investment Fund (MDIF) is planning to turn the age of online computing on its head by giving free web access to every person on Earth.

Known as Outernet MDIF plans to launch hundreds of satellites into orbit by 2015.

And they say the project could provide unrestricted Internet access to countries where their web access is censored, including China and North Korea.

The New York company plans to ask NASA to test their Outernet technology on the International Space Station (left) so that they can begin broadcasting Wi-Fi to web users around the world (right)

Using something known as datacasting technology, which involves sending data over wide radio waves, the New York-based company says they'll be able to broadcast the Internet around the world.

The group is hoping to raise tens of millions of dollars in donations to get the project on the road.

The Outernet team claim that only 60% of the world's population currently have access to the wealth of knowledge that can be found on the Internet.

This is because, despite a wide spread of Wi-FI devices across the globe, many countries are unable or unwilling to provide people with the infrastructure needed to access the web.

The Outernet project is aiming to raise tens of millions of dollars to launch hundreds of miniature satellites known as cubesats to make their dream a reality

The company's plan is to launch hundreds of low-cost miniature satellites, known as cubesats, into low Earth orbit.

Here, each satellite will receive data from a network of ground stations across the globe.

Using a technique known as User Datagram Protocol (UDP) multitasking, which is the sharing of data between users on a network, Outernet will beam information to users.

Much like how you receive a signal on your television and flick through channels, Outernet will broadcast the Internet to you and allow you to flick through certain websites.

THE OUTERNET PROJECT TIMELINE

By June of this year the Outernet project aims to begin deploying prototype satellites to test their technology

In September 2014 they will make a request to NASA to test their technology on the International Space Station

By early 2015 they intend to begin manufacturing and launching their satellites

And in June 2015 the company says they will begin broadcasting the Outernet from space

'We have a very solid understand of the costs involved, as well as experience working on numerous spacecraft,' said Project Lead of Outernet Syed Karim, who fielded some questions on Reddit

'There isn't a lot of raw research that is being done here; much of what is being described has already been proven by other small satellite programs and experiments.

There's really nothing that is technically impossible to this'

But at the prospect of telecoms operators trying to shut the project down before it gets off the ground, Karim said: 'We will fight... and win.'

If everything goes to plan, the Outernet project aims to ask NASA for permission to test the technology on the International Space Station.

And their ultimate goal will be to beginning deploying the Outernet satellites into Earth orbit, which they say can begin in June 201