C K P - Rock solid, Rock bottom Rock star (1941 – 2010)
Obituary
C K Prahalad (1941 - 2010)
Rock solid, Rock bottom Rock star
Coimbatore Krishnarao Prahalad wore many hats in his distinguished career of many years - strategist, professor, consultant, and author - but all throughout, he remained what he was - an unassuming thinker-practitioner who excavated the enormous business potential at the bottom of the pyramid while most of the others were busy squeezing the wrinkled lemons at the top.
C K Prahalad was born on August 8, 1941 at Coimbatore in a cultured Brahmin family of a lawyer and Sanskrit scholar. Armed with a BSC from Chennai’s Loyola College, he joined the ranks of the now- infamous Union Carbide as a manager. This stint proved a landmark in Prahalad’s voyage as a sensitive crusader of radical management theories. Among other things, his humane approach to business showed in his intrepid protest against a literally “hand in glove” discrimination - while the blue-collared staff were allotted inferior hand gloves at the plant, the managers wore superior varieties. His undivided attention to grassroots wisdom, that’s invariably devoid of stardom, found its roots here.
The Union carbide tenure made way for an MBA from IIM, Ahmedabad and a Harvard doctorate in multinational management in a record 2.5 year’s time.
After a brief stint back home, he joined Michigan University’s Ross School of Business in 1977 as a professor of business strategy. What followed is history, and now well known. He won worldwide recognition, thanks to his pioneering lectures and bestseller management books, prime among them “Core Competence” “Computing for the Future”, The Future of Competition’, “The New Age of Innovation” and of course, the runaway hit “Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid - Eradicating Poverty through Profit”
Despite the opposing theories that Bottom of Pyramid can never reap a fortune and that it’s a producing haven at best, not a consumer hub, he stuck to his guns. Today, the worldwide retail revolution and the desperate supply-side ploys to lure the common man with innovative products and services bear testimony to Prahalad’s conviction.
Till the very end, Prahalad was obsessed with mass-market innovation that would ensure sustainable “more-with-less” transformation at the grassroots - be it cost-effective transport, standardized cell phone chargers, eatable packaging or waterless detergents.
“For a popular medium, the best kind of inspiration should derive from life and have its roots in it” remarked the legendary Satyajit Ray in the context of cinema. At the core of Prahalad’s pragmatism was this profound belief. For him, sustainability was more than a need; it was an opportunity for innovation. His untimely demise is undoubtedly an irreparable loss. May his tribe grow!
Aug 10, 2022
Aug 10, 2022
Aug 10, 2022
Aug 10, 2022
Aug 10, 2022
Aug 10, 2022
Aug 10, 2022
Aug 10, 2022
Aug 10, 2022
Aug 10, 2022
Aug 10, 2022
Aug 10, 2022
Aug 10, 2022
Aug 10, 2022
Aug 10, 2022
The laws of the financial world are different from the physical world. You can have prolonged periods of time, when sanity takes a back seat and excesses happen.
R. Venkataraman Aug 20, 2021
Retail trading or day trading has exploded because of falling brokerage rates, democratization of information, higher transparency and mobile platforms.
R. Venkataraman Jun 15, 2021
My simple message for dear readers is, if you don’t have any desperate need for funds, then don’t do anything.
R. Venkataraman May 12, 2021
The blow up of a US hedge fund has resulted in WhatsApp university offering many courses on what went wrong with Bill Hwang and Archegos.
R. Venkataraman Apr 09, 2021
The expensive valuations have been sustained by strong rebound in corporate earnings which led to ~8% upgrade in FY22 Nifty EPS since October 2020.
R. Venkataraman Mar 26, 2021
We believe the interest rates are likely to have bottomed due to inflationary pressure, large government borrowings and normalizing credit growth. Hence rate sensitive sectors should be avoided in our view.
R. Venkataraman Feb 17, 2021
As markets make new highs, one gets more emails and messages, which highlight the accomplishments of traders who have found a formula for making money.
R. Venkataraman Jan 27, 2021
Data does not seem to convincingly prove that short periods of high returns are always followed by meagre returns. Only in 4 instances, we had negative returns in the subsequent year.
R. Venkataraman Jan 01, 2021
Since September end, Bankex is up 16% with large banks like ICICI Bank, Bandhan up 20-27%, Housing Finance Companies like Repco, LICHF, PNB Housing are up 50%-100% from their six-month lows.
R. Venkataraman Oct 13, 2020
Morgan Housel’s 'The Psychology of Money' explains in detail the role of human biases in investment decisions.
R. Venkataraman Sep 26, 2020
Per Order for ETF & Mutual Funds Brokerage
Per Order for Delivery, Intraday, F&O, Currency & Commodity