KACHARAGADLA

The wording of the sub-title, “in search of a relationship”, is deliberate. It would be incorrect to write “in search of a new relationship” because that would assume there was an “old relationship”; except in an indirect manner, which I shall come back to below, India and Japan have never really had a relationship. If one takes the major actors on the global stage today – the US, the EU, Russia, Brazil, China, India and Japan – the weakest link is between Japan and India. To cite only one example: as distant as Brazil and Japan may be geographically and culturally, there is a large emigrant Japanese population, estimated at about 1 ½ million, in Brazil. Similarly, there are Indian diasporas on all continents of the world and in many countries, but none of any significance in Japan. The total number of Indian residents in Japan (population 126 million) is 22,335, about the same number as in Sweden (population 9 ½ million)! The recent (11-14 December) visit of Japanese Prime Minis

It's not often a country or a state decides to found a new capital. But it's happening in southern India. Andhra Pradesh has laid the foundations for Amaravati, which the government intends to be a "smart" city to rival Singapore, Hong Kong among other great cities. Bloomberg's Haslinda Amin looks at how the ambitious project is allowing the local people to dream.  (Source: Bloomberg)

The purpose of a corporate centre is to ensure that resources are invested to maximise profitable growth and long-term value. In spite of their clear purpose and value, corporate centres often get a vote of no-confidence. In these VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) times, it is not easy to keep abreast with all the changes impacting the present and future of the business. The primary goal of a corporate centre is governance and protecting shareholder value. Today, though India Inc is uniquely positioned with its conglomerate structure, it has few umbrella brands with diversified businesses under them. One can see a similar situation in Korea and to some extent in China and Japan. However, there is a need to understand the logic behind corporate centres. One Size Doesn't Fit All Corporates, especially conglomerates, are forced to deconstruct due to their size or diversification, investor engagement as well as strategy and governance issues. But it is rare

Ritesh Agarwal, Founder and CEO, OYO Rooms, on how to be a successful entrepreneur and do it right. RITESH AGARWAL, 22, IS THE FACE OF A NEW INDIA that is teeming with young, innovative entrepreneurs who are not afraid to dream big. His highly successful OYO Rooms allows users to log on and book rooms at budget hotels and guesthouses around the country that have been standardised under the OYO brand. It has a franchise model and has been hugely successful since its inception in 2013. With an enviable inventory of over 4,000 plus hotels, 40,000 plus rooms across 160 plus cities, it came as no surprise when OYO received $100 million in funding from SoftBank earlier this year. Ritesh is a youth icon and interestingly dropped out of college to fulfil his entrepreneurial dreams. He was also the first Asian to graduate as a Thiel Fellow (the Thiel Fellowship backed by PayPal founder Peter Thiel). Here he shares useful tips on how to be a successful entrepreneur and start young. IMP

What’s needed in the ever changing liquefied natural gas (LNG) market in the Asia-Pacific region is more demand to soak up a supply glut that has been on-going for over a year and will get even worse as the New Year starts and last until at least 2020, perhaps as far out as the mid 2020s. To start with, the supply side of the equation: From a market that had somewhat limited supply in the aftermath of the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan and that country’s increased procurement of the super-cooled fuel to make up for the eventual shut down of all of its 50 nuclear plants, and with prices breaching $20 per million British Thermal units (MMBtu) in the first part of 2014, markets have become seriously over-supplied. This stems from several factors. First, the world’s top two LNG exporters, Japan and South Korea, respectively, have seen a slow down in LNG demand growth amid warmer temperatures during the last couple of winters in the Northern Hemisphere. Both countries

OpenAI, the new company c0-founded by Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Y Combinator President Sam Altman, took a long time to come to fruition, says CTO Greg Brockman. But that's okay, because with OpenAI's self-given mission "t o make sure, in the long term, AI has potential to benefit the world" and make sure those benefits are "distributed broadly and evenly," taking your time is crucial. "It's really important that we get it right," he says. It's important to keep the long haul in mind, Brockman says, because you can't rush good science. With "truly some of the best scientists" on board, he expects that OpenAI will, indeed "unlock the next generation of breakthroughs," but you'll never know where or when those breakthroughs will strike. "You can't rush it, it's serendipitious," Brockman says. Brockman, who jumped from payments startup Stripe to become a founding executive at OpenAI, s

Google CEO Sundar Pichai just  responded  to Donald Trump's suggestion that Muslims be banned from entering the United States. In a blog post on Medium Friday night, Pichai wrote, "Let's not let fear defeat our values," inferring that the anti-Muslim rhetoric so closely associated with Trump's presidential campaign is "disheartening." Pichai continued, "The open-mindedness, tolerance, and acceptance of new Americans is one of the country's greatest strengths and most defining characteristics." That's no coincidence, Pichai added, "America, after all, was and is a country of immigrants." Pichai grew up in India and came to the US 22 years ago. He was named CEO of Google in August. Earlier this week, GOP primary frontrunner Donald Trump proposed that Muslims should be banned from entering the US. After the political backfiring commenced, Trump dug his heels in deeper, even firing a warning shot at Republicans fo

The United Nations World Economic Situation and Prospects (WESP) 2016 report said that India will record a 7.3 per cent economic growth in 2016. (Photo: Reuters) India's economy is projected to grow by 7.3 per cent next year and will continue to be the fastest growing economy in the world in 2016 and 2017 amid a volatile global financial conditions that will see diminished trade flows and stagnant investment, according to a UN report released on Thursday. The United Nations World Economic Situation and Prospects (WESP) 2016 report said that India will record a 7.3 per cent  economic growth  in 2016 and 7.5 per cent in 2017. While the growth is only a marginal improvement from the 7.2 per cent India achieved in 2014-15, the country will remain the fastest growing economy in the world in 2016 and 2017, the report said. India's rival in South Asia, China will see a slowdown in growth in 2016 to 6.4 per cent from 6.8 per cent it had achieved in 2015. The growth of th

I've been rich and I’ve been poor. I know both sides very well. Growing up poor, I knew that I wanted to be rich. At the age of 24, I earned my first million dollars. I came a long way and studied the subject all of my life. Over time, I have discovered that if you're not living in prosperity, you're living in poverty. Wealth is a choice that we must all make. Bill Gates once said, "It's not your fault if you were born poor, but it’s your fault if you die poor." There's no reason why you should live in poverty. Wealth is waiting for you, but you have to make up your mind if you want it in your life. For a long time, I struggled to believe that I could eventually become rich. It wasn't until I observed the differences in thoughts and actions between the "haves" and the "have-nots." Here are 10 major differences between rich and poor people: 1a. Poor people  are skeptical I distinctly remember a former coworker of mine