Leh - Travelogue

We were planning on a Mgmt Outing for a long time and after a lot of deliberations, we zeroed in on Leh. It was clearly one of our best Mgmt decisions :-)

We were 8 in all and our original plan was to land in Manali and then drive to Leh. Driving on this road is considered an experience/adventure in itself especially in October since the road is officially closed in mid Sep. We had planned our trip for 2nd week of Oct and we were hoping against hope that the weather God would be kind to us. However, there was a heavy snowfall in Sep last week and also some tourists got trapped/killed and that made us seriously re-think. Finally just 2 days before departure we cancelled our tickets to Manali and booked direct tickets to Leh. Actually in hindsight, we had much more fun with this changed itinerary.

Day Zero: We landed in Delhi at around midnight and had a flight to catch for Leh early in the morning. Hired a couple of cabs and rushed to a nearby Dhaba on the Haryana border. Spent a couple of hours doing you know what till the cops drove us out :-)

Day One: The flight was on-time and we landed at Leh in the morning. Leh is supposed to be the best place in the world to land at. The view from the plane was awesome. We checked into a very nice hotel - Noble House. This hotel had a very nice view from its rooms & terrace and the food they served was awesome. Since Leh is at an altitude of 10,000+ ft. it is advisable to take rest on the first day to let your body adjust to the oxygen levels. We did the same till lunch time and then ventured out in the afternoon to the nearby Leh Palace, Leh Bazaar & a temple. It was really cold and we also had a mild snowfall for sometime.







Day Two: The plan was to go to Pangong Lake which is bisected by the Indo-Chinese border and is the highest brackish lake in the world at around 14000 ft. It is around 150 kms from Leh and one has to cross ChangLa pass which is at around 17,500 ft. We started early in the morning as it takes around 5 hours one way to the lake from Leh. It is preferable to stay overnight by the lake but we wanted to come back the same day. The weather was cloudy and hence we knew it would be tough to reach our destination. The way to lake was very pictureseque with snow-clad mountains on all sides. Our fears came true when our scorpio starting skidding big time as we approached ChangLa pass. We had to return back from Zingral which was at 15,500 ft as only vehicles with chained tyres were allowed beyond that point. It was sad but then we had no other choice. We started driving back towards Leh and decided to head towards Alchi which on the Srinagar highway. This road was equally fantastic with multi-colored barren hillocks on both sides. On the way was a point called Sangam where the river Indus meets the river Zanskar. The view throughout was awesome. We finally reached Alchi monastery which is probably the oldest one in Leh in afternoon and later spent some time on sandy river beach before heading back for Leh. It was a hectic day where we covered close to 250 kms.







Day Three: The plan for Day 3 was to go to Nubra Valley via Khardungla pass. We really did not want a repeat of Day 2 and luckily, the skies were clear in the morning. This was undoubtedly the best day of our trip. The road to Khardungla pass is the highest motorable road in the world at 18,380 ft above sea level. As we approached the pass, the road became very slippery and it got really scary. We were determined to go to the other side of the mountain and we did make it. Some of us had to walk 2 kms at that altitude to get there but it was an amazing experience overall. After a short break at the pass, we headed towards Hunder village in the Nubra Valley. The road to the destination was very scenic with views of snow clad mountains, canyons, valley and even sand dunes. We arrived at the guest house in the evening and enjoyed nice drinks by the bone-fire before crashing off.










Day Four: After a nice breakfast, we started our trek towards Diskit monastery. We even helped ourselves with a ride on Mongolian camels for covering the most sandy portion of the trek. We stopped at the monastery for sometime and then headed back to Leh via Khardungla pass. The road today was much better and we reached Leh in the afternoon. We spent the evening at the Leh Bazaar shopping for some shawls & woolens. We had dinner at a nice hotel in the Bazaar and got to taste some exclusive Kashmiri dishes like Roganjosh & Rista.





Day Five: We were contemplating whether to go to Pangong Lake but then decided against it since we had an early morning flight the next day and covering over 300 kms in a day would have been hectic. We instead chose to visit the very famous Hemis Gumpa, Thiksey monastery & Shey Palace and later spent some time on bank of river Indus.





As you would have realized by now, we clearly did not lose anything by not taking the Manli-Leh road as we could instead cover a lot of ground in and around Leh. Even though we were there for 5 days, we still could not cover places like Pangong & TsoMiri lake. Maybe this will make us all go there again. It was truly an amazing trip to an awesome place ....

Weekend Trip - Coorg

This place significantly exceeded my expectations and hence it would not be fair not to share this. I am referring to a weekend trip to Coorg with family & friends a few months back. The goal was to just chill out completely and goal was met in time & budget :-)

The best part was a relatively unknown HomeStay where we stayed. It's called "Bee Hills" and is in the middle of no-where (read a large estate). It is a pucca "value of money" place - very scenic surroundings, decent food, excellent bon-fire place with a view of surrounding hills, excellent hosts, reasonably priced, no network :-) and much more. Even though I had been to Coorg once earlier and stayed at Orange County, it was no match to this trip. I can now see why Coorg is referred to as Scotland of India. We were there for 3 days and did not venture out of this place even once. The highlight of this trip was am amazing trek that we did. I will share some pictures & a video from the trek to give you a feel.

So, in case you want to plan a weekend get away from Bangalore, do give this place a serious thought ...

:PM

Acquisitions

Acquisitions are in vogue. They are happening across industries and in plenty. I work in the business software industry and it is interesting to note that one of the leading companies' core corporate strategy revolves around acquisitions. I, honestly, am not a big fan of the same. And it helps to know that majority of the acquisitions (especially in the software industry) have been disasters.

Acquisition decisions usually come out of the corporate strategy groups and I would really like to go through one such recommendation report someday to get more insight into the kind of analysis that goes into such a decision. I haven't been to a business school but I would like to list down 'Which One' and 'Which Not' to acquire based on my very limited knowledge of the software industry.

"Which One"

• Complement your offering - A software product company may acquire another smaller one that fills in functional gaps & holes. However the target company should be mature in what it offers (avoid a start-up unless you want access to IP), the revenue/operating margins etc. should be solid (avoid loss making companies) and if possible it should be operating on a compatible technology (integration can be a mess otherwise).
• Acquire Customer base - One may acquire a company just for the customer base. This can either be for gaining entry into a specific segment (say SMBs) or just to simply expand your existing customer base. You, however, may have a functionality overlap and it will help if the target company is not doing too well financially as it will be easier for you to convince acquired customers to upgrade(?) to your offering.
• Kill Noise - It may be worthwhile to buy small niche companies just to kill noise. This should be done only if the small company is struggling financially (revenue going down, trading at 52-week low, etc.). The noise that you want to kill may be in the form of repeated elongated sales cycles in that niche domain because of competition from this small company or negative campaign during sales cycles or an open IP infringement lawsuit from this smaller company or some such headache. Of course, this will make sense if you are a big multi-billion dollar company and the noise creating company is worth a few hundred million.
• Horizontal Expansion - An acquisition may also make sense if you are very profitable but spot a glass ceiling in the vertical(s) you are operating in. In order to ensure further growth in revenues/profits, you may want to use some of your idle cash productively by entering a new industry via an acquisition. Of course, the target company in this case should preferably be a mature and profitable one in the business it operates in. This buy vs make decision will be even better if your current products/services can also be sold to the customers in the new industry or vice versa.
• Eat into supply chain - Acquiring your upstream/downstream partner in the supply chain may sometimes make a lot of sense and you may be able to improve the operational efficiency and thus become more competitive.
• Access to IP - An acquisition may be made to gain access to IP/patents and build something promising and profitable on top of that. This will be better than wasting an opportunity or even paying royalty/settling lawsuits later on. It will be easier to do this if the IP lies with a very small company compared to you.
• Kill Competition - You may acquire a competitor to gain market share, increase your revenue/profits and strengthen your leadership position. However, this may be successful mainly in high growth or emerging industry. Acquiring a competitor, especially a medium/large one, in a mature industry can be a mess.

"Which Not"

• Technology Mismatch - Acquiring a company with an intention to complement/extend your current offering can be very dangerous if it operates on a different technology. It is likely to result in huge integration challenges and more often than not you will end up in a mess.
• Immature Products - Acquiring a company with flashy but immature niche products with limited or uncertain revenue stream is a gamble that one should avoid in my opinion, unless you have ton loads of cash that you don't care about. Buying a company based on promise is alright as long as there are at least a few customer success stories to its name.
• Buy Vs Make - Buying a small niche company, when it is not tough to produce that software or diversify your service offering into that vertical in-house, is not a smart move in my opinion. Acquisitions always come with redundancies, cultural differences & geographical challenges. Moreover, whatever you build in-house will always better integrate into your overall portfolio and brand.
• Revenue Gain - Buying a company operating in a related vertical just to beef up your revenue is a short term gain in my opinion and can cause damage in the long run. One should evaluate how easily the target company would integrate into your offering/brand in the medium to long term before going ahead.
• Expensive Acquisition - Acquiring a company by paying much more than its current market value is something that should be avoided. Sometimes, companies get sold out for much more than what they are worth either because there is more than one potential buyer in the game or because analysts claim a huge growth potential in that domain. An expensive acquisition should be done only if you are ultra sure about recovering your investment in some form.
• Kill Leading Competition - In a product oriented industry, acquiring a competitor to gain market share can be dangerous. This should be avoided especially if you need to pay a lot for this acquisition. Acquiring a medium to large sized competitor will either confuse your customers if you continue both offerings in parallel or will confuse you while trying to integrate or rationalize the offerings. Either way, it will be a big mess.