ThePrint: “With all of its engines only trundling along and not really hitting high gear, the Indian economy is set to see a new persistent ‘Hindu rate of growth’ of 6.5 – 7 per cent, unless some painful reforms are carried out at the central and state levels. The original ‘Hindu rate of growth’ — a term coined by the late economist Raj Krishna in 1978 — was meant to capture the persistence of a low rate of growth accompanied by low per capita income. At the time, that low rate of growth was pegged at around 3.5 – 4 per cent. The new, current ‘Hindu rate of growth’ is far faster than that, but is still wholly inadequate to cater to the needs of the population. It’s through faster growth that jobs can be created, incomes increased, and standards of living improved. The reason why India is not likely to exceed this new ‘Hindu rate’ is that each of its engines of growth — consumption, investment, exports, and government expenditure — are all running at their basic levels. That is, none of them are outperforming, and aren’t expected to in the medium term.”
Brian Halligan: “Your org will naturally become more risk averse as you scale: When you are in the early stages of your startup, almost by definition, everyone you hire is very risk seeking and is willing to be very bold to create a lot of upside. After all, there’s very little downside to protect! As you scale and have something to lose, the organization will protect that. This is a natural thing that happens to existing employees whose net worth is improving – I don’t blame them. This is a natural thing that happens to new hires when they look at your brand on their LinkedIn profile as part of the decision to join you – again, I don’t blame them. In our case, my cofounder is preternaturally risk seeking and was always a very good counterbalance to that trend toward risk aversion…Cultures typically “break” around 150 employees (Dunbar’s number): Our culture broke around this size and almost every other CEO’s company I talk to did too. I think it is a combination of the missionary ratio, some risk aversion, the fact the founder didn’t interview everyone, and that there is a new layer of management. Getting through that in one piece is kind of where you move from a startup to a scaleup, imho.”
FT: “India’s economy is failing to create enough jobs for its young and growing population and train the skilled workers its companies need to harness that demographic dividend. This mismatch is feeding widespread grievances and represents one of the biggest challenges for Modi as he enters his second decade in power. “Every month about a million formal job seekers are being added to the workforce,” says Rituparna Chakraborty, co-founder of Teamlease, which describes itself as India’s biggest staffing company. “Nine out of 10 of them go into the informal sector — jobs where there is no employment contract, no social security benefits, no protection, and no wage guarantees.” “The poorest Indians tend to take on daily wage jobs in things like construction because there aren’t too many alternatives,” says Shruti Rajagopalan, senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, in Virginia. “The people in the middle are still waiting, and would rather hold out for a government job, or work on the family farm because at least it provides them food security.””
Mint: “The time taken between a crisis being identified and appropriate actions being initiated to deal with it is of utmost importance. In times of crisis, the worst response is usually silence of the top leadership. In this age of social media, not communicating within few hours of a crisis breaking out is a cardinal error. As soon as a crisis happens, communication channels must be opened both to internal teams and the external world. The longer it takes to communicate, higher the chance of unfounded rumours filling a vacuum of information. Such a delay could also be construed as the organization involved being on the backfoot. What you communicate is as important as when you communicate. To decide what you need to say, one should quickly develop an understanding of the crisis.”
