Atul Karmarkar.Com

SiPort CEO shot dead, worrying trend on the rise

Atul Karmarkar — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 00:58:59 +0000

Barely a couple of months after the Indian CEO of Graziano was killed by a mob of dismissed workers, Sid Agrawal, the 56 year old CEO of SiPort, a semiconductor company, was shot dead by Jing Hua Wu, a 47 year old lead product test engineer, who was apparently laid off just recently. The ex-employee also managed to kill two other senior employees, Marilyn Lewis, 67, the company’s HR head, and Brian Pugh, 47, VP-Operations.

Agrawal graduated from IIT Kanpur and was all set to visit his alma mater for the 35th reunion of his batch. In an ironic twist, L K Chaudury, the late Graziano CEO was also an IIT-Kanpur alumnus.

This seems to be a pretty sickening pattern developing. The economic slowdown has caused turbulence worldwide, not just in some countries, and companies are doing all they can to remain afloat. It is going to be a hell of a task for them to lay off employees with the fear of being killed lurking in their minds.

Force India to partner McLaren, Mercedes

Atul Karmarkar — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 00:41:47 +0000

Image: Force India Website

Further to their decision to part ways with Ferrari, Force India has announced details about their recently inked five year partnership with McLaren Applied Technologies (a McLaren subsidiary) and Mercedes-Benz HighPerformanceEngines.

It will interesting to see how this partnership works out, and especially if McLaren are going to “recommend” a new driver line-up, given their new status in the Force India team. If that happens, both Fisichella and Sutil could find themselves on the chopping block, though Mallya wasn’t too forthcoming on this issue. He did say that he had taken some pretty hard decisions for the benefit of the team, and would not hesitate to do whatever was necessary to get his team among the front runners.

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India beat Aussies, take back Border-Gavaskar trophy

Atul Karmarkar — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 17:48:47 +0000

Image: Cricketnext website

The Indian team laid all demons to rest today, dishing out a 172 run defeat to Ricky Ponting’s hapless team. From the start of the day itself, it was looking an uphill task, and notwithstanding some lusty hitting by Hayden (77 off 93 balls), the Aussies crumbled to a combination of some smart bowling changes, and of course, Dhoni’s captaincy. It was also a time for goodbye as India’s most successful captain Sourav Ganguly bid adieu to the game, and did so on a high note, scoring in excess of 300 runs at an average exceeding 50.

However, I felt Ishant Sharma, who was declared the man of the series, should have been a joint winner of that accolade with Gautam Gambhir, who really kept the Aussie bowlers at bay with 463 runs in just three matches, as he missed the last Test due to a ban. Sharma of course, was simply amazing with a 15 wicket haul, the best being the one at Mohali where he bowled Ricky Ponting with a gem of a delivery.

Luckily, in this Test, the pressure was too much for Australia, but if the target was smaller, one never knows what could have happened, as Hayden was let off too many times for comfort, by Dravid and Dhoni.

I’d said earlier that Dhoni is Indian cricket’s new mascot, and if anything, this Test was a further confirmation of that. As earlier, it was nice to see that he could think out of the box and come up with some ideas to break the tedium, like bowling to an all offside field that strangled the Aussies in their first innings, the right bowling changes, and of course, luck with the toss. He also demonstrated he had a keen sense of the moment, when in a fantastic gesture, he invited Ganguly to lead the team one last time after the fall of the 9th wicket. It was superb, and compares with another one after the match was over, when he invited Anil Kumble to receive the trophy jointly with him, as Kumble was the captain when the series began.

The Aussies of course, cribbed all they could, but had to grudgingly accept that they were totally outplayed in this series. India is now the # 2 Test team, but a lot still needs to be done. Congrats, MSD & Team !!

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Say hello to the Audi R8

Atul Karmarkar — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 13:41:49 +0000

Image: Audi Website

Audi has launched the R8 in India, the newest entrant to the Rs.1 crore plus elite club.

The Audi R8 is equipped with a 4.2-litre FSI V8 mid-engine, 4-valve FSI technology, does the 0-100 in 4.6 seconds flat, goes upto 301 kmph, and has a power output of 309 kW (420 bhp).

The cars has a drive-train combination of quattro permanent all-wheel drive with manual six-speed transmission or six-speed R-tronic and an all-aluminium space frame body.

The car costs Rs. 1.17 crore (ex-showroom Delhi), and will be available across the Audi dealer network at Delhi, Gurgaon, Chandigarh, Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Ludhiana, Chennai, Kochi and Kolkata. As with the Audi Q7 and TT Coupe, the Audi R8 will also be imported. The Audi A4 and A6 are manufactured locally at their Aurangabad plant.

The company had a target to sell 15 cars this year, and they claim to already have 15 orders, bookings for which had started in June. So their sales guys have no work for the rest of the year !! Lucky guys :-p

In India, Audi manufactures the A4 and A6 at its assembly plant in Aurangabad. The Audi A8, sports utility vehicle Q7 and the Audi TT coupe are imported.

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Mallya overhauls Force India, terminates Ferrari contract

Atul Karmarkar — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 17:42:41 +0000

Image: Force India Website

Force India bossman Vijay Mallya has decided to crack the whip after the team’s abysmal performance in the recently concluded Formula One 2008 season. The team finished last, and failed to score any points, coming agonisingly close to doing so, though, especially at Monaco.

Mallya has terminated the engine contract with Ferrari a year ahead of schedule, and chucked out Team Principal Colin Kolles Technical Head Mike Gascoyne.

Mallya will now be the team principal, and will be assisted by Robert Fernley, director of Force India, along with design director Mark Smith and technical director James Key. The team will now look to source their engines from McLaren-Mercedes.

Mallya is said to be negotiating with McLaren for an entire drivetrain (engine and gearbox) package along with the new kinetic energy recovery system (KERS) to be introduced from next year. He also offered to compensate Ferrari for any development costs incurred on Force India’s behalf for 2009.

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Hamilton wins Formula One title in Brazilian GP drama

Atul Karmarkar — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 00:27:51 +0000

The stage was set for easily the most anticipated race of the year, the season ending Brazilian Grand Prix at Interlagos. The situation was eerily similar to last year, except that it was Ferrari’s Felipe Massa and not Kimi Raikkonen who was in the title hunt. Massa’s chances for the title had suffered a big blow at the Singapore Grand Prix, where the snaking fuel hose put paid to his hopes. He headed to Brazil knowing that he had to win, and that Hamilton should finish atleast sixth or worse.

At qualifying, Massa took pole and everything seemed to be headed Ferrari’s way as Hamilton had a bad run and only managed to come in fifth. The race itself was fantastic, everything boiled down to the last lap, and Massa took the chequered flag. Finito ! But hey wait, let’s rewind a bit.

The real drama started when, due to rain towards the end of the race, all the top five drivers at that stage pitted for wet tyres, whereas Timo Glock, who was sixth, chose to remain on track.

After the pit stops, Massa, Alonso and Raikkonen regained their places, but Hamilton and Vettel now trailed Glock, and things were still ok for Hamilton. He then made an error on the 70th lap, allowing Vettel to pounce and claim the crucial fifth place.

In the meanwhile, Massa had crossed the line, almost half a minute ahead, and with Hamilton still at sixth place, the Ferrari tifosi went wild, celebrating what they believed to be a Ferrari victory as well as Massa becoming World Champion. However, the finish was yet to be scripted.

With Vettel and Hamilton thrashing it out, the obstacle was Glock, still on dry tyres and struggling to keep his place. Hamilton overtook Vettel and then as Glock appeared to slow down, went past him as well, stunning the huge Ferrari and Brazilian crowd into sheer disbelief, becoming the youngest ever F1 World Champion, as well as the sport’s first non-white one. The irony ? He won by a single point, the same margin by which he lost the title last year !

Though there was a flurry of arguments all over the net about the race being fixed, or Glock being paid off by McLaren etc, the fact is that Hamilton deserved to win. Ferrari simply made too many mistakes this year, and looked a pale shadow of their former self, with cars giving way in several races. Reliability, once a Ferrari hallmark, was simply in short supply, though they managed to take home the Constructor’s title. Massa summed it up best, saying, “We need to congratulate Lewis. He did a great championship, and he scored more points than us, so deserves to be champion.”

The footnote was the retirement of David Coulthard, the ageing warhorse, who went out in a pathetic manner, caught in a spin thanks to Rosberg, and then walking back to the pit lane. Hardly a grand finish to a long F1 career. Adieu, DC !

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Anil “Jumbo” Kumble bids farewell

Atul Karmarkar — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 17:18:51 +0000

The recently concluded Test match at Delhi between India and Australia will be remembered for the retirement of Anil “Jumbo” Kumble, one of India’s greatest cricketers, it’s leading wicket taker as well as # 3 on the all time list. It is amazing that for a long time, the “300 club” had a single spinner, Lance Gibbs, and the three leading wicket takers in the world now are all spinners. Another statistic, his 619 wickets in 132 Tests with a strike rate of 4.69 wkts/test is pretty decent for a spinner and far superior to Kapil Dev’s 434 wickets in 131 Tests at a rate of 3.31 wkts/test.

From the time he made his debut as a shy but determined young man to his exit as India’s captain, there was one quality that defined Kumble; Tenacity. He always seemed to be at the batsman’s throat, testing and probing him before luring him to his doom. He also ushered in a unique style of bowling, ie. ”spin bowling without spinning / turning the ball” !! This is not intended to be wholly sarcastic, but is something I found really frustrating when watching a match, especially when Sachin Tendulkar or another part time bowler could get amazing turn from the pitch whereas Kumble toiled away unsuccessfully, relying more on his millimetric accuracy and the variable bounce he obtained from the pitch.

In fact, even in the recent Delhi Test for example, Sehwag bowled quite well, and for Kumble, the sight of his opening batsman getting 5 wickets by bowling spin was probably the straw that finally broke the camel’s back.

However, his overall record speaks for itself. Farewell, Jumbo, you have served Indian cricket very well.

HR Manager defrauds Deutsche Bank

Atul Karmarkar — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 06:08:57 +0000

Saw an article in the DNA today about an Assistant HR manager of Deutsche Bank, Gautam Deepak Baan, who was arrested by the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Mumbai crime branch for allegedly defrauding the bank of Rs. 1.63 crores. A 28 year old guy, he drew a salary of Rs.10 lakh a year and enjoyed living it up, with two cars (including a Skoda) and two flats in Mumbai.

He used to handle the suspense account of the bank, where money was transferred before being credited to employees’ salary accounts. Apparently, when employees left Deutsche Bank, their salary accounts were not closed and Baan used to transfer the money from the suspense account to these salary accounts and then to his own account. The fraud was unearthed when he tried to close the account of an employee who had quit a year ago, and the bank got suspicious since the closure request did not come from the employee.

If these facts are indeed correct, the whole situation is so ludicrous that it’s not even funny.

Firstly, even after employees had quit, how was Deutsche Bank accounting for the monies paid out month after month? Weren’t the accounting / finance guys keeping tabs on the breakup of funds or even the full and final settlements paid out to such employees ?

What happened to the reconciliation of Profession Tax / Provident Fund / Income Tax and other statutory payments made every month ?

Nowadays, most banks allow companies to directly credit salary into employee accounts. There are a minimum of two persons needed for this; one uploads the salary data as a .csv file using a digital signature, and the other person authorises the transaction, again with a digital signature. Payment of salary is a serious issue and I can’t understand how Deutsche Bank could have entrusted a single individual with this task and that too with no check on him.

I also cannot understand how Baan was able to transfer funds from these ex-employees’ accounts to his own. Just because someone quits a job doesn’t mean they hand over control of their accounts to their ex-employer. At most, it gets converted from a zero balance salary account to a minimum balance savings account, unless the ex-employee voluntarily decides to close the account.

It is difficult to imagine an organisation like Deutsche Bank laying themselves open to such frauds, and speaks volumes about the checks and balances being maintained, or lack thereof.

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Happy Diwali, the Google way

Atul Karmarkar — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 03:22:25 +0000

Wishing everyone and their families a Very Happy and Safe Diwali !!

Hope the coming year continues to brings health, wealth and happiness to you and your loved ones. As usual, the guys at Google are always quick to showcase such festivals with a custom logo, and this time is no different.

Looks kinda gloomy and desolate, doesn’t it? Hardly an apt logo for the festival of lights !!

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MS Dhoni - Man of the moment in Indian cricket

Atul Karmarkar — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 02:03:20 +0000

If there was one hugely significant fact brought home during the recently concluded second Test between India and Australia, I thought it was the emergence of Mahendra Singh Dhoni as Indian cricket’s man of the moment.

From the time he burst on the scene as a hard hitting middle order wicket-keeper batsman to the time he led India to victory in the inaugural T20 World Cup last year, and now as a substitute captain at Mohali, scripting one of India’s biggest wins against the Aussies, Dhoni has certainly come a long way. As a batsman, he has curbed his tendency to lash out at each ball, and now prefers to build his innings, while still keeping his impressive strike rate intact, knowing the importance of his wicket to the opposition. This has made him an even more dangerous middle-lower order batsman as was seen at Mohali.

The thing that has always struck me about him is his natural flair and tendency to think out of the box, whether it be his faith in some bowlers (getting a rookie to bowl the final over of the T20 World Cup), field settings (putting leg slips in place while Hussey and Katich were batting in the recent Test), shuffling the batting order et al. He seems to have a feel for the game and has the ability to spot an opportunity, back his instincts and go for the kill. The best part is that his team also responds by putting in that extra bit to justify his decision. He is also a captain who ‘carries’ his team with him.

I also feel there is one big difference between him and Kumble; The latter, from the old school, likes to conform to a set pattern, does all he thinks is possible, and then waits for things to happen on their own, whereas Dhoni prefers to make changes, break the pattern and make things happen ! This is what puts the opposition on the back foot, besides enlivening the proceedings as well. All of his actions and methods do not always yield the desired results, but nobody can accuse him of not trying.

For the moment, he is working out fine as wicketkeeper-batsman-captain, though in the long run, I’m not sure how much his wicket-keeping and captaincy will go together, both being highly stressful jobs, and only time will tell if he can successfully combine both.

Way to go, MSD !!

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