A call to the IOC president to preserve the Olympics Spirit

Reproduced hereunder is the letter I sent to the IOC and the Court of Arbitration for Sport earlier today. 

Ref:  CAS OG 24/17 Vinesh Phogat v. United World Wrestling & the International Olympic Committee (IOC)

 

In the matter referenced above, I seek to make a submission for your consideration as under.

It is my intention not as much to seek a legal remedy, but to urge you to uphold the spirit of Olympism and the original values[1] expressed in the Olympic Charter to “encourage effort”, “preserve human dignity” and “develop harmony”.

I make this submission inspired by the concept of Olympism which in the words of the International Olympic Commission, “seeks to create a way of life based on the joy found in effort, the educational value of good example and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles.”[2]

When making a determination on the matter, I urge you to take a course of action that will uphold the Olympic spirit.

1.       I do not contest the right of United World Wrestling to frame rules that obtain today and whose mechanical interpretation has led to the situation that is before you today. But I do submit that when rules create conditions that can lead to the violation of Olympism, the IOC has not just the right but an obligation to intervene.

2.       It is my submission that the rules of the competition as enunciated and administered by the United World Wrestling do not help preserve human dignity, a value enshrined in the Olympic Charter. I draw your attention to media reports[3] about the extreme efforts taken by the Indian athlete to conform, from having her hair cut, to starving herself of food and water and even having her blood drawn in order to reach the cut off weight. The rules as framed encourage an athlete to go to extremes bordering on a threat to their own lives. 

3.      I accept that it is important to have a mechanism in place to verify that athletes play by the rules and for that a weighing system must be in place. Apart from reasons of administrative convenience to help organisers, I see no reason why the UWW[4] should prescribe that the weigh in should happen in the morning. In Paris, I am told that the weigh in happened at 730 am even when a bout may have been scheduled for much later in the day. I see no reason why individual athletes cannot have the flexibility to weigh in at a time of their choice even if it is just before the start of a bout.

4.       According to the rules[5] of the UWW, the weigh-in window is for 30 minutes on day one and 15 min on day two.  This too looks like a rule made to suit administrative convenience. Media reports suggest that if the Indian athlete had been given some more time, she would have been within the range. If by simply changing the way a rule is administered, the outcome changes, that alone is enough to question the rule ab initio.  

5.       Until not long ago, the wrestling competition was just a day long. Then the field expanded and with that a two day competition became necessary. With 3 bouts on day one, post bout  nourishment takes on additional importance. If the tournament had been spread over 3 days instead of 2, for example, nourishment would be dealt with in a manner which makes weight management easier. If by tinkering with scheduling, weight management for athletes becomes easier, surely the rule gets called into question.  

6.       It is to the credit of the Indian athlete that she did not resort to gaming the system which would really have gone against the Olympic spirit. If she had allowed the permitted 400 ml of blood to be drawn from her body, her weight would have dropped by 400 g and she would have made the cut. If after this, she had forefeited her match for reasons of not feeling up to it, she would have received the silver medal. But she did not do so, her staff did not do so.

Before I close my arguments, let me draw your attention to one of the core principles of criminal justice. “Let the punishment fit the crime,” said Cicero in De Legibus in 106 BCE. I submit that the Olympic movement would be sullied for now and forever if the Indian athlete who committed no crime is punished so, when at the same Olympics a team which violated the Olympic spirt and has a record of doing so more than once managed to escape with a mere rap on the knuckles. The whole world is aware of the incident when a country deployed drones to spy on the competition. All that happened to them was the a couple of people got suspended and the team go docked a few points. The Indian athlete who would have been allowed to participate if the rules had been administered a little differently now has to live with a blot on her career for as long as she lives. Is this far? I am not asking that the team that committed the crime of the worst order, of defiling all that the Olympic stands for or the country which did so should be handed down the equivalent of a death sentence. I am only saying that it smacks of an arbitrariness which I hope your conscience will stand in the way of.

I thank you for your attention. I trust that when you sit down to write your order, you will be fair and also be seen to be fair.

[1] https://olympics.com/ioc/olympic-values

[2] https://olympics.com/ioc/olympic-values

[3] https://www.hindustantimes.com/sports/olympics/vinesh-phogat-cut-hair-drew-out-blood-didnt-sleep-or-drink-water-to-reduce-excess-weight-but-nothing-worked-reports-101723021347177.html

[4] https://cdn.uww.org/2023-01/wrestling_rules.pdf

[5] https://cdn.uww.org/2023-01/wrestling_rules.pdf

Letter to my colleagues

May 20, 2024

Dear colleague, 

You may have seen from the financial results for the year ended March 31, 2024 that IRIS is now in the 100 crore club. Also, in 2024, IRIS completes 20 years in business.  Next Saturday, we will celebrate both milestones, with staff and ex staff,  and friends.  You must come with family.  We have invited all of our service providers and everyone who has helped us come this far.

You may wonder if the achievement of 100 crore in revenue is such a big deal for it warrant any hoopla. What is so great about  completion of 20 years, you might ask. Both are huge milestones in the history of IRIS. Allow me to explain why.  

I am not embarrassed that it has taken us 20 years to get to Rs 102 crores. Someone drew a parallel with Sunil Gavaskar's 36 not out in 60 over at the 1975 Cricket world cup. I can live with a Gavaskar comparison. Because, by the time he retired, Gavaskar had scored over 10000 runs in 125 matches at an average of over 50 runs per inning over a 16 year career. Fantastic stats that. 

At IRIS, we have laid the foundation to launch the next phase of our growth. With a mere Rs 23.5 crore of external funding, including the Rs 16 crore IPO, we have come this far. Today a Series A round is seldom less than twice that amount. I cant think of many companies that have done as much as we have with as little. So if we took 20 years to get to Rs 100 cr, so what. We are still standing, aren't we? We make a difference to the lives of over 2 billion people. सोचने से चक्कर आता है | Knowing that we have served over 6000 enterprise clients across 52+ countries gives me a heady feeling.  No hyperbole this. 

Those who have been with us for long know that as recently as 7 years ago, we were on the brink. Since then we have grown our business fourfold and profitably.  I am over the moon with how much we have achieved.  And with so little. 

To amuse myself, I thought I would see how we compare with other listed Indian companies. Data on www.screener.in tells me that 2324 listed companies have a higher turnover than us. That is half of India's listed universe. Of these,1654 companies turned in a Profit after tax higher than us. When I add return on equity into the mix, I am left with just 451 companies. If I add balance sheet parameters and compare these 451 companies ahead of us, we look even better. If I consider leveraging by looking at the debt equity ratio, I am left with just 194 companies. And finally, when we factor in Current ratio, I discovered that the number of companies which beat us on all of these metrics is just 134.   And to think that we are just getting started. 

i don't aspire for IRIS to be the world's or even India's biggest company, but I do want us to be cherished by investors.  I do want our products to be sought after by discerning clients. Our products are Made in India for the world and i want us to make our country proud with best of breed world class offerings that can compete on the world stage and hold their own against anybody. The Rs 100 crore mark is an opportunity to pause and reflect and to return refreshed with renewed vigour.  

Let me turn now to the 20 year milestone. Independent studies show that the survival rate of new firms after six years is around 40%.  If you are going to fail, it is best that you fail early, venture capitalists will tell you.  We could have shut shop a long time ago. But we chose to stick it out. The work we were doing and continue to do is too important for us to consider any other option. As Founders we took pay cuts and pay deferrals. Many of you made sacrifices. We stayed on, knowing that just as good times don't last for ever, bad times too don't last for ever.   

What does the future hold for all of us at IRIS ? I am hugely optimistic. we will grow by selling more and selling to more.  Today, our flag flies high in some 52 countries leaving another 141 for us to enter. We serve over 6000 enterprises, that needs to increase that manifold. We need to deepen the relationship with each of our customers, be they regulators or the regulated. 

Every successful business has a purpose. Ours is to create a safer and healthier environment for legitimate money to move freely, safely, securely, respecting country laws. The calling we answer to is to make the world a more transparent place for business to operate in efficiently. 
Our vision is grandiose. IRIS is 4 businesses rolled into one, feeding off one another.  Each of the businesses is a multi billion dollar opportunity and we have not even begin scratching the surface.

We still don't have sufficient resources to execute on our vision. But I am confident that we will be able to attract primary capital given how far we have reached and given how efficiently we deploy capital. 

Our next  company wide celebration should be when we cross Rs 500 cr in revenues. I hope we can get there before Balu, Deepta and I move on.  

Thank you for your attention

Swaminathan

Badrinath diary

 

We visited Badrinath earlier this week. We were a party of 6, including my frail 90 year old mother in law. We travelled to the temple town by helicopter from Dehradun and stayed overnight in a hotel in Badrinath.

On the day we landed in Dehradun, we heard rumours of trouble brewing in Badrinath. Concerned family members called, worried for our safety, after having watched news from Badrinath on TV.   After talking to a few locals, we decided to go ahead. And we are glad that we did.

If there indeed had been trouble in the days before our visit, there was no evidence of that when we were there. The yatra was uneventful.

The test of any situation is when it has to encounter something out of the ordinary. The visit of a 90 year old would certainly count as being out of the ordinary. As a fellow pilgrim remarked, my 90 year old mother in law was probably the oldest on the temple premises on the 2 days we were there, the vigraha aside. We were concerned for her safety and seeing the teeming crowds, even more so.

It seemed as if the presence of my mother in law was noticed by the entire administrative machinery who threw a protective ring around her to ensure her safe movement whenever she was on the temple premises. From the ITBP on duty to the temple authorities, they were all hugely supportive and to each of them we owe a deep debt of gratitude. Within the temple, the staff sprang to action, offering her a stool to sit on whenever she wanted and clearing some floor space for her if she chose to squat on the ground. They were attentive to her comfort while going about their routine duties and not for once did we have to worry about her safety and comfort.  It was not one person who took care of her, it is as if everybody was chipping in.  The system worked. 

Our early morning visit to the Tapt Kund was also very uneventful.  A gracious Ravalji even found time to meet my mother in law and seemed to be suitably impressed to learn that she  knew every Ravalji from the time she first visited Badrinath in the 50s. 

We had heard rumours that pilgrims were not being allowed to carry mobile phones or that there was a ban on photography, both of which turned out to be false. All 6 of us carried our phones with us and we even took photographs outside the temple to share with relatives elsewhere who would otherwise have been worried.

While we did not avail of VIP access, we had tickets for every Arati which may well have made it somewhat easier for us than it is for  the pilgrim who has to queue up for hours to get in. But in this respect, the situation that prevails in Badri would not be dissimilar to what obtains in any other temple town in the country.

I do have a suggestion for the local government and the temple authorities. Given the amount of construction and renovation going on, which I am told is part of a master plan, crowd flow needs to be regulated. Because of ongoing construction, the passageways in many places are narrow, causing logjams that could throw up safety issues. The authorities may wish to think of ways to control the crowd flow.

That bit aside, I must say that  the authorities, both government and non government, are just fantastic, doing not just the bit they can but stretching themselves to the hilt to provide pilgrims comfort and a good darshan of the Lord.

Jai Badri Vishal. 

How Arvind Kejriwal can gain from the turmoil in the Congress

I am convinced that if Arvind Kejriwal plays his cards well, he may emerge as the biggest gainer from the chaos in the Congress. 

Allow me to explain. 

While we do not know who the 300 Congressmen are who are supposed to have agreed with the sentiments in the letter, it is likely that that the political future of those who have lent their names to the letter is over. Unless there are compelling reasons why the Gandhis can do nothing to them. 

So, except for a few like Kapil Sibal whose legal acumen the party cannot do without or a Mukul Wasnik who is seen as a Dalit leader or Ghulam Nabi Azad who is seen as a Muslim leader, the rest have a serious problem of staying relevant. 

Shashi Tharoor may appeal to people like us but he cannot win an election without the backing of the party in a big way. Jitin Peasad, his lineage notwithstanding, is a nobody in UP. There seems to be no place in the party for the likes of Sandeep Dikshit who simply cannot be a sycophant. From among all those who signed the letter, Sandeep is perhaps the only person who can mobilise the masses to some extent. Which is why he can even pose a threat to the Gandhis if he gets a party to back him.

Prithviraj Chavan may have been the Chief Minister of Maharashtra but with his clean image, he is actually useless to the party. He does not even appear on party posters in Mumbai, that is how much of a non entity he is. As for Renuka Chowdhury, when was the last time anybody heard anything from her anyway.  

Manish Tewari too is no mass leader who will not even be visible without a party, his eloquence notwithstanding. Or Anand Sharma, I had even forgotten all about him until his name cropped up as a signatory. A scorned politician cannot really do much if his or her relevance comes from being accorded a position of significance by the High Command and not a mass following which neither of these gents have. 

Others like Veerappa Moily have very little value for the party as their utility to the party is questionable. They are no Jagjivan Ram who sent the shivers down Indira Gandhi's spine when he switched loyalties. 

The letter would have forced the Gandhis to act if atleast one of its Chief Ministers had joined them. It is also obvious that most of the signatories have the ability to lead a new political formation which could have emerged  if someone like Kamal Nath had supported them. It is widely accepted that he has the guile backed by financial muscle to pull off something like this. 

Where does this leave the signatories. Much like Trishanku, they are caught in nowhere land from which they can extract themselves only if they act decisively. Else they will be stuck in a corner somewhere, irrelevant and unsung and forgotten. Or they could make peace with the Gandhis and go grovelling but there is no guarantee that they will be accommodated. 

But if they wish to stay relevant, and if they do not wish to join the BJP, and if they want a national platform, Arvind Kejriwal offers a viable option for them to consider. AAP's sphere of influence may be limited, but its appeal is national. 

I hope some of them think about it. It will be good for the country. 

Will Arvind let them in? I don't know. But if he does, it will be the loudest declaration that he has come of age in politics.  

Innovation at the AGM

At the AGM of IRIS Business Services Limited, the firm of which I am the Founder & CEO, we broke new ground.

The law allowed us to have a virtual AGM, the law required us to allow only those shareholders to speak who submitted a request in writing in advance of the AGM.

At IRIS, we have always held the shareholder in high esteem, whether the person had 100 shares or 1 lakh shares. We have always adhered to the highest levels of governance, often going beyond what the law required of us. Which is why it did not seem right to us to take comfort behind the provisions of law and tell our shareholders that they cannot be heard unless they registered in advance. What if they wanted a clarification on an issue that cropped up at the AGM ?

One way would have been to open the floor up for discussions. But from our own experience, it was obvious to us that maintaining order may be difficult. Far too often have we have attended meetings where more than one person jump into say something when someone else was speaking. The administrative headache of maintaining order is just too much and the reputation risk from offending someone's ego who did not get to speak on demand even more. A moderated session is much easier to handle when there are not many people in a meeting.

As we explored the various options, we stumbled on to an option that was simple to execute. We created a group of shareholders on Whatsapp. To start with we included every shareholder whose mobile number was available with us, which, as we discovered, was not too many. Thats when we filed an announcement with the stock exchange announcing the formation of the group and shared a link to the group too, inviting shareholders to join. Within the next 48 hours, the numbers grew.

We told members that the group had been formed to facilitate live interaction between shareholders and the management. We requested them to post questions on the group with the assurance that all questions received until the end of the AGM proceedings would be answered.

It worked out very well. More than a dozen questions, every one of them meaningful and insightful, were asked. Every one of them was answered and it looked like every attendee went away happy. It is possible that a few questions may have come from people other than shareholders too, but we were okay with that. The link to the group was available publicly and we did not think it necessary to keep people out.

I think with this initiative we broke new ground when it comes to engaging with investors. I am also glad that we did it. I would strongly recommend this to every listed company and especially to small caps who are victims of a trust deficit because of the shenanigans of a few.

If any CEO or CFO or IR professional wants to know more, I am happy to help, Do reach out to me.