One Afternoon at the Passport office...

Man behind Window (MBW) -"VSNL is a government entity".....

Me -"No sir it isnt, ist owned by the Tata group" ...

MBW - "No, No Its government, you need a No Objection certificate ...." (yawns)

Me (desperate) -- "Sir it WAS a government enterprise its now a listed private company...."

MBW -" Please come and meet my senior officer"

Me and MBW go to meet senior officer, the whole queue stares at us .... ready to pounce and bury me for wasting their (already long wasted) time further.....

MBW and me stand in front of officer while he signs some docs and talks on the phone.

Officer- Yes

MBW - Sir He (pointing at me) is a govt. employee and doesnt have a NOC....

Me - (cutting in between) ... I am not a govt. employee -- I work for VSNL....

Officer - VSNL ,( Duh!!!! ) -- full form kaay?

Me - Videsh San.....

MBW -- (Butting in) ... Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited .... Govt. company Sahib.... ( I think its in the MBW's KRA to reject at least one application per hour and he is desperately trying to achieve the same)

Me - No NO its listed, it has TATA group majority stake .... they bought it in 2002. ( I suddenly realise if this man can perplex me so much with 10 words.... what "third degree torture would be with Mumbai Police")

Officer --- (looking at me skeptically and then at the MBW confidently) --- Are you sure?

Me - Yes Yes !!!

Officer - (Scratches his head and considers for a while) ..... Are you ready to give it in writing

Me - ( With a cocktail feeling of Confusion, shock, amusement and desperation) Give what in writing???

Officer - That VSNL is not a govt. entity and you do not require a NOC....

Me - You want ME to write that

Officer - Yes and sign .....

Me - OK (I thought for a second the officer would also ask me to swear on Bhagwad Gita " Whatever i say is the truth and the ultimate truth")

Me and MBW walk back to the window -- once again we get stares and grunts for delay....

I scrtch out a letter on a "rough page" provided by MBW, he apporves of it (seems dejected though for not achieveing his KRA) and accepts the papers for

"Issue of Additional Passport Booklet"............

--- "This is based on a true incident at the regional Passport office Worli, Mumbai. The characters and script are totally real and any lack of resemblence to real characters is purely due to shortfalls in my writing skills."

I have a lot to say on the whole process for issue of Passports and peripheral services but specifically on the above issue. Is a letter from me good enough proof of me not being a Govt. employee?, shouldnt the govt. issue a list of companies which are govt. and require NOC?

Why should eveen grassroot level govt. employees including sweepers, Clerks, Primary Secondary school teachers etc require a No Objection Certificate from the Govt.? Is there any risk of them absconding with "secret data" and if they do want to abscond, wouldnt they make a passport first and then try to abscond? Why, why, why.........?

More on how the whole process is a "organisational process" disaster as would be classified by "Goal" famous Elihau Goldraitt in coming posts.

Death of Long queues

"why is he taking so much time" Honk Honk.... "I should have been in the other queue, It seems ot be moving faster".... "Sorry Lunch break you will have to wait for another half hour".....I am sure each one of us had had these thoughts and heard this waiting in queues -- be it at the toll plaza or at the railway ticket counter or in the world of retail boom even at the Supermarket.

Imagine if you could zoom past the Toll plaza with automatic billing to your mobile, or just wave your mobile phone at the supermarket counter..... be prepared it might happen soon in India too.

Here are some examples where this technology ---Near Field communications (NFC) for geeks -- has already started being implemented.

"From August 2007, the Nokia 6131 NFC phone has been sold to the public inseveral Chinese cities (Xiamen, Guangzhou and Beijing). The phone comes with apre-loaded transport application that can be used in the cities’ public transportsystems. The application includes a prepaid account used to pay for transporttickets, which can also be used to pay in selected shops.

Taiwan is set to become the first country in the world offering mobile debit andcredit card services based on NFC. Both announcements indicate that Taiwaneseoperators and banks are prepared to offer mobile contactless payment services ona large scale."

In the era of shrinking ARPU's and increasing competition for mobile operators in India, I think this is the avenue which many mobile operators in India too would be exploring.

Lets look at the rough economics for a Toll Booth at Vashi in Mumbai. It has about 8 booths both ways. At any given point in time all booths have at least a 4 car queue and at times long snaking queues. However today given the physical nature of transaction, it takes average of 40 secs per person to pay and move -- - more if exact change is not tendered. Which means a capability of serving average 70 cars per booth per hour = 500 cars per hour or 12,000 per day. Even if the processing time can be reduced by 5 secs per car it would mean additional 1500 cars (please note demand is not an issue since the queue is omnipresent). An average of 30 Rs per car means additional revenue of Rs 45000 per day, an increase of ~13%. Imagine a product where a mobile company launches this service wherein you can SMS your car number as you approach the Toll booth so that you have a special lane wherein you can simply pass thru by holding up your mobile, the toll amount being charged to your prepaid/postpaid account This could reduce the processing time to less than 10 secs -- since the person would effectively continue to dirve past with only the number being scanned. The mobile companies could keep 1rs per transaction -either charged extra or by having osme rev share mechanism with the Toll Booth owner since their revenues are increased and costs are reduced. Assuming a ramp upp to 20% customers and increased car traffic to ~ 20000 cars per day ( 1500 additional cars/ 5 secs for a 30 sec reduction in time) there would be a revennue of 2000 rs per day per toll booth, equivalent to 5 peoples ARPU per month.

OK i agree that above is not a worked out product, but i am sure a good product team and some more brainstorming can come up with the final application. I am sure that even if the phone company were to bear the cost of infrastructure to install B-end of the application at the Toll plaza this would be a profitable venture. With added incentives like lower toll cost for paying thru mobile --- you can do this by sharing additional revenues + passing on cost savings of printing receipts to the car owners ---- there would soon be increased usage. An this is just one toll plaza imagine how many such toll booths we encounter just in and around Mumbai, imagine the number of car travellers with mobile phones (90% +), imagine the hotseller this product would be, imagine the increased ARPU's....... imagine similar such applications in Supermarkets, railway tickets, "pay N Park ", Movie tickets, ........... with NFC implemented its not hard for this imaginiation to become a reality.......