Archive for the Industry Category
Posted on March 8, 2010 by Tahlent Team
At the beginning of the millennium, there were only three women among the heads of large US public companies. In 2009, there were 12 women among Fortune 500 CEOs, wielding 2.4% of top leadership positions in the world’s top companies. While this is something to cheer about, the sobering fact is that there are only 29 women leaders (1.5%) among the world’s 2000 top performing companies.
Despite the best of efforts that women are making to secure top leadership posts, the world of business is still largely considered a man’s turf and women making it big here are often considered a rarity of sorts. As a Harvard Business Review study reported, in most cases women leaders are appointed from outside the company and often fare poorly in the internal race for the CEO’s post.
However, the good news is that all of these women at the top represent a significant change that has been sweeping boardrooms during this decade.
Of the 29 women CEOs of the world’s top 2000 companies, 19 were appointed after 2002. Most of them were given the job when the company was performing badly and needed an extra boost. For instance, under Indra Nooyi, PepsiCo grew by 12% in 2009 while Avon, under CEO Andrea Jung, grew by 34%.
These numbers are also likely to change significantly in the decades to come, with more and more women enrolling for management education. For instance, women comprise 36% of the Harvard Business School class of 2011. In India, too, the results are encouraging. The Indian School of Business in Hyderabad, ranked 12th in the world in the Financial Times Business School Rankings, had 26% of women among its students in 2009. Among its faculty, 16% were women.
There is also a significant uptick in the number of women entrepreneurs in the country. The Economic Times reports that IIM Bangalore’s Management Program for Women Entrepreneurs (MPWE) admitted only 60 women in 2007. By 2009, the course had 130 women in two batches. In 2010 there are over 200 applications for the course, which begins in April.
Things are also looking up for rural women. Established in 2006, the Maan Deshi Udyogini Business School for rural women, founded by economist and farmer Chetna Gala Sinha, counts among its students shepherds, tea vendors and fruit merchants. Located about 430 km from Mumbai, the school specifically addresses school dropouts and women without formal education.
Businessweek reported a few years ago that companies with the highest representations of women in leadership roles show better financial performance. However, while many top companies have women in key management roles, in the boardroom they are still no more than a token presence.
India has nearly four times the number of women CEOs as the US. A recent survey by EMA Partners International revealed that around 11% of Indian publicly held companies have women CEOs. However, it must also be considered that many of these leaders are from the families of the promoters. The true test of success will be when women are allowed to break the glass ceiling and rise up from the ranks into the boardroom.
Tags: boardroom, CEO, Fortune 500, gender equality, Indra Nooyi, management, Pepsico, women, women CEOs, women entrepreneurs, women leaders
Posted on January 1, 2010 by Tahlent Team
Analysts everywhere are awaiting the end of a decade that has seen at least two economic upheavals. In 2001 the bursting dotcom bubble caused a major shakeup among Silicon Valley startups, spreading gloom across the world. Late 2008 witnessed the fall of Lehman Brothers and the domino effect on the global economy that resulted in widespread job losses, slashed budgets and political repercussions.
Business-watchers are optimistic that the new decade will bring good tidings. They say that there are encouraging signs that the recession is showing signs of easing. While the economic slowdown led to across-the-board cost-cutting and dealt a harsh blow to face-to-face networking events in 2009, it forced serious professionals to go online. It made them rethink and redefine their networking strategies.
People are now networking in more and more dynamic ways. Video résumés, mashup profiles and online portfolios gained importance as job-seekers tried to gain a foothold in the slippery market.
The growth of wireless communications clearly led the way in 2009, making the mobile office a reality. At the same time, the rising popularity of tools like Google Wave enabled teams to collaborate across geographies and time zones while allowing companies to keep operating costs low while driving up productivity.
Online, business networking has acquired a personal touch. Signs of change are showing in networks such as Facebook, which initially began as a platform for university grads to connect with each other but now sees increasing traction with advertisers and brand marketers, making them attractive to job-seekers.
These trends reflect an upbeat mood in the jobs market. The Wall Street Journal reported in December that recruiters expect a 19% rise in executive-level jobs in the first half of 2010. The Christian Science Monitor warned that the growth of the jobs market may be “agonizingly slow” though the outlook is good for small and medium businesses, which will lap up many job-seekers. There is good news for fresh graduates, too. Job fairs, which were not fashionable in 2009, are showing signs of a revival.
The trends go to show that no matter at what pace the economy recovers, smart business networking holds the key to success in 2010. Are you ready?
Tags: 2010, business networking, economy, fresh graduates, job fairs, Jobs, networks, new year, small businesses, social networking, startups
Posted on November 18, 2009 by Tahlent Team
Biofuel for aircrafts
Planes that fly exclusively on biofuel can’t be far away, if research propounded by the Policy Exchange convinces the European Union into taking a decision in their favor.
The UK think-tank has argued that the biofuel lobby should put aside demands for biofuel from cars and other terrestrial vehicles, as meeting them would require the raw material to produce the fuels to be grown over a cultivable area equivalent to the USA. Instead, Policy Exchange recommends that biofuels be used to fly aircraft, as this would help reduce the emission of greenhouse gases directly into the stratosphere.
Fuels prepared from algae, corn, sugarcane, rapeseed and jatropha – a berry-producing wild plant – have already been tested. Recently, Virgin Atlantic used a fuel mixture containing up to 20 percent biofuel on a test flight.
India already contributes immensely to global aviation industry in terms of technical support, avionics and wing design. This new aspect of the aviation business could open a vital thrust area for Indian industry, particularly in the area of chemicals.
While the farming of jatropha for bio-diesel production has already interested agriculturists, the process of refining and processing biofuels could offset the rise of the related chemicals industry. The increased demand for biofuel production would also necessitate the employment of qualified chemical engineers.
Even as the demand for biofuels grows, the possibilities are bright for career-seekers. For fresh science graduates and students of agricultural sciences, careers in chemical engineering and biofuel cropping must surely be something to think about.
Tags: aerospace technology, automotive, aviation, biofuels, career options, cars, chemical engineers, engineers, green energy, Industry, planes, research
Posted on November 9, 2009 by Tahlent Team
Q: What do these drugs have in common – Avastin, Humira, Rituxan, Enbrel, Lantus?
A: By 2014, they are pegged to be the largest-selling drugs in the market.
Avastin, an anti-cancer antibody from biotech giant Genentech (recently acquired by Roche), is at the top of the list. Humira is an anti-inflammatory antibody for rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis and Crohn’s disease from Abbott Labs. Rituxan, an antibody for cancer and arthritis, is owned by Genentech/ Roche. The anti-inflammatory antibody Enbrel sold by Amgen and Wyeth (now part of Pfizer) comes in fourth while Sanofi-Aventis’s diabetes drug Lantus is in fifth place.
All of these are biotech products marketed by mainline pharma companies. The shift towards biotech-derived products represents a significant therapeutic shift, according to Evaluate Pharma. Evaluate also forecasts that over 50 percent of the top 100 drugs in 2014 will be biotech medications, which marks a significant shift from 28 percent in 2008 and 11 percent in 2000. It explains why Big Pharma has been pursuing biotech relentlessly.
Those stepping into a career in Biologics have reason to smile while marketing grads need to put their thinking caps on and get a little perspective. Most cutting-edge drug discovery jobs are in biotech, while the cool drug marketing jobs are going to remain in the small-molecule pharma business.
Either way, opportunity knocks.
Tags: Abbott Labs, Amgen, Avastin, biologics, biotech, Careers, drug discovery, drug manufacturers, drugs, Enbrel, Evaluate pharma, Genentech, Humira, Industry, Jobs, Lantus, Pfizer, pharma, pharma companies, Rituxan, Roche, Sanofi-Aventis, Wyeth
Posted on October 31, 2009 by Tahlent Team
Finally, the curtain of the recession seems to have lifted. While the market slump has drawn blood in the form of lost jobs and made the market more cautious, it has not stopped some gritty entrepreneurs from seeking and finding their pot of gold.
In fact, when everyone else was worrying about what the recession would do to the future, some people just rolled up their sleeves, dug their heels in and created their own future.
It is perhaps ironic that the announcement of the TATA NEN Hottest Startups Awards 2008 came just after the recession had taken hold of the economy. About a hundred startups were identified in the fray and five were named for the top position.
Rajesh Varier’s activecubes solutions, founded in 2007 and offering business analytics services, placed first among the TATA NEN Hottest Startups. Close behind was Vamsi Krishna’s Lakshya, which helps students prepare for engineering and medical entrance examinations. From India’s booming agribusiness sector was Amith Agarwal’s Star Agri, which provides comprehensive warehousing, procurement and collateral management services for agri-commodities. Also on the list was Pavan Kumar Vijay’s takeovercode.com, which provides IT-enabled legal, financial and management consultancy to companies. From the consumer retail sector, the judges picked Jay Gupta’s The Loot, a multi-brand discount store that helps shoppers buy their desired brands at half the price.
Several hundred companies applied for a place among the Hottest Startups. The wealth of ideas that came to the fore was a clear indication that entrepreneurs were looking for opportunity in hitherto untapped sectors.
Among the most vibrant and unusual business ideas were in the underserved sector of sports. GoSports, for example, works with promising athletes “to groom the next generation of world-beating Indian sporting champions” and aspires to “invigorate the country’s sporting ecosystem.” On the other hand, there are companies whose work borders on social activism. DailyDump provides products that enable us to manage household waste and convert it to useful high-quality compost.
That, however, is only the tip of the iceberg.
In a May 2009 story about India’s successful young entrepreneurs, The Washington Post reported that the economic slump did not halt the dreams of India’s budding entrepreneurs. The Post article outlined the success stories of Rajesh Razdan’s mCarbon, which provides sophisticated call-management services to cell phone users, and Zibika.com, an online personal finance portal focused on the insurance market, started by 25-year-old entrepreneur Arun Balakrishnan.
According to the Post, “Analysts say that although the amount invested in start-ups dipped in the first quarter of 2009, the number of deals did not.”
Does that mean that the best is yet to come?
Tags: activecubes solutions, DailyDump, entrepreneurs, Entrepreneurship, GoSports, India, Indian Professionals, Lakshya, mCarbon, Star Agri, takeovercode.com, Talent, Talent Community, Talent Network, TATA NEN, TATA NEN Hottest Startups, The Loot, Washington Post, Zibika.com
