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Yet Another Self-Important Blog.
Rohit Singh
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[Sun, 18 Jul 2004]
The curse of cynicism...
I saw this (ex-UAL President Ronojoy Dutta joining as Air Sahara's CEO)
and the first thought was "poor guy! working in the ultimate
founder-centric company might not be fun for a professional manager." The
second thought was if this was (a) career move of some sort, (b) coming
back to contribute to India's growth, or (c) coming back and taking a
chhota job before full and complete retirement.
I think it is safe to rule out the career-move option. This guy was United's president (remember, that's not CEO!) and United has 500-odd planes and is the world's largest carrier. He is now the head of a 20-plane outfit. Even if there's a bad job-scene for airline uber-executives and even if the Indian air-travel market is set to explode this guy could've done much better for himself.
So that leaves options (b) and (c). In India, there are 3 big(!) airline companies: Jet, Indian Airlines, Air Sahara. A professional manager would probably have big issues with the owners of each of them (Naresh Goyal, the Indian sarkaar and Subroto Ray 'Sahara', respectively). Since Jet is what keeps Naresh Goyal busy, he isn't going to hire a real CEO. Both the Indian sarkaar and Mr. Sahara sometimes dabble in other things so they might want a manager-type. Still, IA is the bigger of these two and would be, by far, the meatier job for anyone of Ronojoy Dutta's calibre. So, if it really were option (b), i.e. contributing to India's growth, IA's job would've suited him better. Assuming, of course, the babus at IA would've the sense to hire him.
So that leaves option (c) (pre-retirement chhota job). Or does it ? The problem is, this guy isn't that old. I did some digging around and found out that he graduated from HBS in 1980 (he is an IIT Kgp alum). Even if he were 30 then, he'd be 54 now-- not a retireable age.
Since it's probably better to be charitable, I'll assume that it's option (b)-- the guy really wants to do some good. Funny, I'd have thought that the Air Deccan model of ultra-cheap air travel would suit India better. So maybe Air Sahara will go into ultra-cheap mode and we'll see a price war? That then would be the thing to look for: if there is a price war, initiated by Air Sahara, Mr. Dutta has gone back to really work. If things just keep happening like normal, he's probably just preparing for retirement.
Naked, Life Dunk, Toyopet, Bongo et al.
Forbes has a really funny article on good, bad, and just-plain-weird automobile names. Interesting tidbits there. For example, all Lamborghini cars are named after bulls (the "Diablo" is such a cool name!). Japanese cars that are limited to a Japan-only marked often have very weird names (the Daihatsu "Naked" and the Toyota "Toyopet"). And there is a whole set of weird high-sounding names for really mediocre American cars (the Buick LeSabre, for instance).
The article also talks about the mechanics of car naming and how hard it has become to find something that's cool and has not been taken. It also talks about how (and why) luxury car makers avoid giving names to their cars and just use alphanumeric strings.
They don't have Indian cars on the list but here's my list.
Good: Premier Padmini (nice name for a really pretty car), the Indica/Indigo offering from Tata (good word-play on the whole made-in-India theme)
Bad: Cielo (and the whole madness of car names ending in "o": Santro, Alto, Scorpio, Bolero, Baleno)
Just-Plain-Weird: the Wagon-R
Retro-cool: Ambassador and its lovely nickname, Amby.