Why Audits are Essential

 

Audit is a routine activity in any organization, while last month I was taking the audit on behalf of my department, just casually the head of the audit team asked me that what I think about audits, and are they necessarily required, I replied to him, but at the same time it spurred lots of thoughts in me, and I wrote something about it, and thought I could even publish it here

  

In the dictionary the term “audit” means inspection or examination. It’s a practice of various institutions and organizations to conduct audits within their structure. A culture of conducting audits boosts the efficiency of an organization as it’s human tendency to become attentive in the sight of an inspection or examination, though in professional world, audits doesn’t necessarily mean like said above, but undeniably they inspire the audit receiving team to enhance their standards of performance.  

 

Audits are important in any industry, be it manufacturing, IT, media, banking or construction. But I believe in industries like banking and construction, they serve the most important purpose.Banking is all about finance of hefty and astronomical sums.While giving loans or issuing credit cards banks have to be very careful, and that’s mainly because of quality of their agents. The agents themselves don’t bother to follow the rules fixed by the bank; I receive many phone calls and am assured a new credit card, even without address verification and other formalities. Even the staff of the bank in their eagerness to sanction loans, become very soft towards the guidelines of their bank.  Then in an industry like construction where a large workforce of unskilled and less educated workmen is involved in constructing the product, I feel it must be very hard to maintain quality standards. If audits are not performed timely in these industries, then for sure things will go out of control.

 

Audits may be internal or external, and both are equally important and effective. Frequency of the audits in the form of a calendar should be fixed and followed religiously to maintain the effectiveness of the same. The selection of the auditors is also a key point and only very experienced professionals who understand the gravity or triviality of all micro and macro level activities and processes, should be assigned the job. 

 

There comes a feeling that audit’s are not required as everybody in an organization knows his or her responsibility and people are mature and sincere enough to perform their responsibility flawlessly. But looking at the other side of coin, though people in any organization are capable enough but there are lots of micro level activities, which may not be executed up to the mark. A systematic schedule of audits ensures that all micro level activities like timely updation of all the records, all the documentation, etc are performed in the best possible way and also all the standards followed by the organization are met up.  

 

The audits can be made more successful if the Auditees take it as an opportunity to enhance their quality of work and not as an inspection imposed on them. The most important part of the whole audit process is the corrective action being taken by the audit receiving team. If a team receives an audit in true spirits and is enthusiastic about implementing the corrective actions, then only the very purpose behind conducting audits can be deemed accomplished.

 

Indian Entrepreneurs

Why North Indians make excellent entrepreneurs

People in every region/community in india always praise their region/comminity, for example a tamil will be fond of his state, similarly a marathi, gujarati, bengali etc. But i have not seen such tendency in the people belonging to North India, though they are perhaps the most successful people in this country, be it business, entrepreneurship ,leadership, politics or anything. The reason behind the lack of such chauvinism is perhaps lack of regionlism. And lack of regionalism is because they dont feel threatened by other communities in india as they have always occupied leading positions in the country in most of  the fields

North Indians are known for their entrepreneureship and leadership abilities that’s why majority of Indian entrepreneurs/major businessmen belong to North India.Basically they from Punjab,Haryana, Rajasthan , Uttar Pradesh & Delhi states of India.

Take a look

GD Birla-Founder of Birla group

Bhai Mohan Singh-Founder of pharmaceutical gaint Ranbaxy, he paved the way for this industry in India

Bajajs– Bajaj group

 B M Munjal-Founder, owner of Hero group, the world’s biggest producer of two wheelers

KP Singh– Founder owner of real estate gaint DLF, he is 8th richest man on earth with individual worth of $ 30 billion, single handedly transformed Gurgaon from a village to a business hub.

Jindals– Jindal group fame, one of the biggest private sector groups in India,

Lalit Suri-Chairman of the Bharat Hotels chain and the single largest hotel owner. Lalit Suri can be called as the uncrowned hotel king of India

M.S. Oberoy-Founder of the Oberoi Group of Hotels, known as the father of Indian hotel industry

Naresh Goyal– Founder owner of india’s biggest private airline, Jet airways

Raunaq singh-was one of the earliest entrepreneurs of independent India who made it big. He was the founder of Raunaq group. The Raunaq Group’s major companies include Apollo Tyres Ltd, Bharat Gears Ltd, Bharat Steel Tubes Ltd, Raunaq International Ltd, Menarini Raunaq Pharma Ltd, and Raunaq Automotive Components Ltd.

Subhash Chandra– Founder owner of zee group,l india’s biggest private media group, recently started Indian cricket league

Sunil Mittal– Founder owner of Bharati/Airtel group, one of the richest men on earth

Shobhana Bhartiya– Daughter of renowned industrialist KK Birla, Shobhana Bhartia is the vice-chairperson as well as the editorial director of the Hindustan Times group, which is among India’s major newspaper and media houses

There are end numbers of such people but I can recall these names instantly

Not only in India, but the successful NRI entrepreneurs are mostly from north

LN Mittal–  Perhaps the most famous Indian businessman abroad, 5th richest man on earth, proud owner of Indian passport

Hindujas– The Hinduja brothers — are a  business family. According to the Sunday Times Rich List they are worth 6.2 Billion Pounds (Approximately 12.4 Billion Dollars). They are involved with many businesses, in various parts of the world. The Hinduja brothers have stakes in global finance, telecommunications, film and oil (Gulf Oil) businesses.

Chatwals-One of the most famous hoteliers in the US, known for the proximity to the Clintons

Arun sarin– Global CEO of Vodafone group

Saber Bhatia– Founder of Hotmail

Vinod Dham— Former Vice Presinent in Intel , He is also the co-founder partner of New Path Ventures which has funded Companies like Nevis Networks.Dhams are punjabis who migrated to india from Rawalpindi in present day pakistan

Vinod Khosla– One of the the brightest indian name in USA’s silicon valley,.He was one of the co-founders of Sun Microsystems and became a general partner of the venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers in 1986.

Lord swaraj paul – is an Indian-born, British-based business magnate and philanthropist. He was knighted by the Queen in 1978. In 1996 he became a life peer, i.e. a member of the House of Lords, taking the title Baron Paul of Marylebone in the City of Westminster.

Anil agarwal– Vedanta group, UK, one of the biggest names in UK’s corporate sector

A.J. Agarwal, senior managing director and financier in corporate advisory services at the Blackstone Group

Jaypaul S.Ahluwalia, Director for AXA Group Insurance

Kim Singh, founder CEO PortaEnterprise. Was awarded Entrepreneur of the Year by Ernst & Young LLP and Merrill Lynch.

Gurbaksh Chahal, one of the youngest and most successful internet entrepreneurs of recent history. Created two companies worth over $340 million by the age of 25

Rakesh Gangwal, former CEO and Chairman, US Airways Group

Gaurav Garg, co-founder of Redback Networks

Rajat Gupta, former Managing Director, McKinsey & Company

Rajiv Gupta, a General Manager of Hewlett Packard

Anshu Jain, managing director and global head of capital markets at DeutscheBank

Naveen Jain, former project manager at Microsoft and founder of InfoSpace.com

Shailesh Mehta, former CEO and chairman of the board of Providian Financial Corporation; currently president and CEO of Granite Hill Capital Ventures

Rajeev Misra, managing director and global head of integrated credit trading at Deutsche Bank

Jay Sidhu, Former Chairman and CEO of Sovereign Bancorp

Sanjiv Sidhu, founder and CEO of i2 Technologies, a a Dallas, Texas based supply chain management software and services company.

Pradeep Sindhu, Co-founder and CTO of Juniper Networks

Dinakar Singh, Founder of TPG-Axon Capital Management and former managing director at Goldman Sachs (one of the youngest in the firm’s history)

Rana Talwar, banker, former Group CEO of Standard Chartered Bank

Poonam Gupta, Chicago, Entrepreneur – President, Iyka Inc

Arjun Malhotra- is an indian businessman who co-founded HCL Technologies Ltd  in 1976. He is an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. He founded TechSpan  in 1998. TechSpan merged with HeadStrong in 2003. Currently he is the CEO of Headstrong, a US based IT consulting company. He also sits on the board of IIT, ISB, and many other educational and social organizations.

I wont be exaggerating when I say about 80% of big Indian names  in business and entrepreneurship are from North India. For clarification, by north I mean khari boli/Punjabi speaking north western region in India which include Punjab, Haryana, Himachal,delhi, Western UP and Rajasthan.

Other major names in business from India include Tatas, Ambanis and Narayan murthy.Tatas are Persians with roots outside India, ambanis are Gujaratis and murthy is south Indian.So, we have some of the entrepreneurs  from rest of India. Its however evident that the north enjoy an overwhelming  domination in producing entrepreneurs/business magnates

What prompted me to start this blog is recent icidences in India highlighting north Indian people, that they are more prone to break laws etc(and similar stupid stuff).

On the other hands south indians have made us proud by their achievements in engineering …that’s why many times i think that we indians compliment each other very beautifully and together we can make India a developed country in another two decades.I have immense respect and love for all fellow indians from all parts of our great country.

VIVEK MITTAL