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It’s been a week since several bombs tore through South Bombay like a hurricane and already the city is getting back to normal. Some say it’s the strength, courage and/or resilience of it’s people that allows Bombay to move forward. I would simply say, we have created the perfect bubble to live in. This bubble has been created out of necessity since the political infrastructure of this country has simply lost its moral compass. Everything I read about government in India revolves around two basic issues: money and disregard for life.

Safety in this country is a joke. The police patrol the streets with nothing more then a stick and a fat belly. Money that should go towards police issued revolvers, CBs and police cars has surely been pilfered by the higher ups. When a terrorist attacks, the police are clueless and powerless as they don’t have the tools to deal with this type of threat. In the end, people die.

About two years back my parents visited Bombay and they had an extra suitcase which we had no place for. Since real estate is a premium in Bombay, I had the brilliant idea of sticking the empty suitcase in the trunk of my car. For 5 months we visited pretty much every hotel and/or mall that had security and NOT ONE person questioned what was in the suitcase. They opened the trunk looked at the suitcase and then proceeded to shut the trunk. If the government was truly concerned about it’s citizens it would not let private companies conduct security checks and instead use the military as it does for the airports. This decision allows the government to save money but puts the public at risk and in the end, people die.

A politician first and foremost should be doing everything to take care of people in his/her district, but in reality they are more worried about taking care of themselves first. Another great example are the roads in Bombay. Building roads is a fairly simple thing and is done around the world and other parts of India without an issues. However, for some strange reason the roads in Bombay are always in a state of disrepair, of course corruption plays a part. If the cost of the road is Rs. 100, by the time the road is completed only Rs. 5o might have been spent on sub-standard materials, the rest is classified as “leakage”. When roads are so badly constructed it could be a death trap or lead to a serious injury for someone that is riding on a motorcycle and happens to hit a pothole. If you hit that pothole and are taken to a government hospital, let’s just say I wouldn’t even send my worst enemy to a government hospital for treatment. Yet again, the mixture of money and disregard for life creates an environment where government hospital facilities are on par with hospitals from when dinosaurs roamed the earth. In the end, people die.

You get the point, I could go on and on with examples. So what do we do? We create our own bubbles. Who cares if the building we live is filthy, as long as your home is clean. Who cares if people are begging on the street, you are sitting in an air conditioned car. Who cares if someone’s office got bombed, you and your staff are safe.

The problem with bubbles is that they can pop at any moment. When it pops who will help you? The government or will your strength, courage and resilience pull you through.

The 8th edition of the Mumbai Marathon took place on Jan. 16. This was the 4th Mumbai Marathon that I have participated in and each year it gets better and better, not only from an excitement perspective but also my running time.

This year I completed the half marathon (13.1 miles, 21.1km) in 2:01:26, I was absolutely shooting for sub-2′s, but couldn’t pull it together during the last 4 kilometers to pickup some speed…next year.

My Mumbai half-marathon timings are:

2011 – 2:01:26
2009 – 2:07
2008 – 2:16
2006 – 2:16

What really helped me this year was using the RunKeeper app on my iPhone. RunKeeper was constantly giving me real-time stats on my run and I was able to speed it up or slow it down based on the information. I would highly recommend the program if you are planning to run a 5km or a full blown 42km marathon. You can see my RunKeeper stats for my 2011 run. The website tracks all your runs and aggregates the data and I can see this turning into a much bigger platform then it currently is.

If you have been following this blog for the past 4 years while I’ve been living in Bombay, you know I rarely cover two topics – India’s movie industry (aka Bollywood) and Indian politics.  However, when the two collide it creates a chemical reaction that the media can’t ignore nor I.

My Name Is Khan, the newest film by Bollywood’s biggest star Shah Rukh Khan (SRK), ran into some turbulence this week in Bombay because of the dirty politics played by the Shiv Sena. Let’s rewind a bit.

SRK who is a part owner in the cricket team Kolkata Knight Riders said he would not mind having Pakistani’s players on this team. Agreed, with the terror attack on Nov. 26 in Bombay it’s a sore subject for many but the Shiv Sena, took an extreme view of his comments.  The Shiv Sena flew into action and did what they are good at – scare people and disrupt the flow of things.  The Shiv Sena threatened to block his new movie and damage the property of the theater owners.

This is not the first time this has happened, the Shiv Sena pulled the same sh#& with a film by Karan Johar (KJ) and sadly KJ had to say sorry to the Shiv Sena leadership team…weak. That’s the issue, the Shiv Sena knows that millions are on the line and can extort people and force their version of terrorism on the film industry. This time the industry and more importantly SRK, told the Shiv Sena to get lost and as usual the Shiv Sena’s threat of violence was all bark.  Of course, the PR machine of the Shiv Sena was telling anyone that listened that they were successful in their efforts. I’m still trying to figure out how the Shiv Sena keeps score.

The latest stunt by the Shiva Sena is just another in a long list of things that will make anyone shake their head in disgust. They are focused on all the wrong things because to tackle the real issues would be too much work.

Their stance on past issues:

• Valentine’s day should not be celebrated since it’s not our culture
• All taxi drivers should speak the local language – Marathi
• SJ’s movie “Wake Up Side” – should be banned because they call the city Bombay, not Mumbai
• All BMC/MCGM (governing body of Mumbai) correspondence should be conducted in Marathi

As you can see, the above are all VERY critical issues and much more important then some of the real issues affecting Bombay – poverty, water shortages, electricity blackouts, etc…

On a side note, I think part of SRK’s success in standing up to the Shiv Sena can goto Twitter (he tweets at @iamsrk). It gave SRK an unfiltered and real-time communication channel with his audience. I’d love to see the Shiv Sena use Twitter, oh wait it’s not part of their culture and Twitter currently does not have a localization for Marathi!

Well, that didn’t take long for Bombay real estate developers to go from building “affordable housing” to overpriced properties.  Back in March 2009, at the height of the financial crisis every real estate developer was talking about changing their business model and going after value for money projects.  Now it seems many are scraping that residential business model and back to building massive properties, case in point – Indiabulls Real Estate (IBREAL). They recently kicked off their advertising campaign for Sky, Sky Suite and Sky Forest, all 3 properties are located in Lower Parel.  According to a sales rep I spoke to at IBREAL, Sky is sold out and their managed residences at Sky Suite are 20% sold. Sky just came onto the market about 6 weeks back, so that is either an incredible sales effort or excellent marketing to say “you can’t buy, go away.”

The latest building to go on sale is Sky Forest. The marketing info talks about 10,000 to 22,000 sq/ft for either a duplex or triplex.  I called and asked about pricing, it starts at Rs. 20,000 a sq/ft plus Rs. 50 per floor rise and Rs. 1000 sq/ft for a Worli view. So the math for a 30th floor 10,000 sq/ft pad is:

Base price = Rs. 20,000
Floor rise @ Rs. 50 x 30 = Rs. 1,500
Worli view = Rs. 1,000
Total 22,500 x 10,000 = Rs. 22.5 CR (approx USD 4.7 million)

The kicker is that the 10,000 sq/ft is really super built-up area, whereas the livable carpet area is more like 4,430 sq/ft. Why such a hugh difference? That’s because of the crazy Bombay real estate math that includes things like the lobby and other common areas of a building and quoted as “super built-up”, exceptionally stupid I must say.

So the price is really more like Rs. 45,000 sq/ft or around USD 1,000 which is quite spendy.

It’s been over year since the financial markets started to collapse and since then we are seeing many deals that might make you scratch your head.  The one that comes to mind is Sequoia Capital investing into low incoming housing in Bombay.

Sequoia Capital is one of the oldest and most well connected venture capital firms in the world, they have invested in companies like Atari, Cisco, Google, LinkedIn and PayPal to name a few. It was started by Don Valentine who had the balls to invest in Cisco Systems back in December 1987, which was just weeks AFTER the October 1987 stock market crash.

Back to the low income housing project. Sequoia Capital is investing in Tata Housing which has a project outside of Bombay in Boisar. The flats will most likely sell for between USD 8,000 to 10,000. So why would Sequoia get involved? I’m betting there are a couple reasons:

1. Sequoia Capital is first and foremost a technology VC firm and unfortunately the number of technology deals that are in play in India is a fraction of what they see on a global scale.  Which means instead of funding entrepreneurs they have to be entrepreneurial themselves.

2. There is a HUGH potential to streamline the construction industry in India.  I’m guessing Sequoia will try and see if they can inject some technology into the process and see how it scales with Tata Housing.  If it works, then they can target the entire industry and get a piece of the action.   I’ve seen people bring foreign building products to India which are priced 25-50% more then a local product and that just won’t work. You need to innovate within India so you can understand the cost constrains and get the locals comfortable with the product.

If this works out, I would expect them to go after the agricultural space and drop some knowledge there as well.