EAVESDROPPER / Great pilot, dodgy plane

The national carrier Indian Airlines recently launched its new Hyderabad-Dubai route. To help it celebrate the event, the airline invited a plane-load of scribes to Dubai. The journey from Delhi to Hyderabad and then onward to Dubai was quite uneventful. So was the return Dubai-Hyderabad leg. However, on the Hyderabad to Delhi sector, a little party-pooper happened.

No sooner had the Airbus taken off for Delhi than it started to shake violently, much to the passengers’ collective alarm. A few violent shakes and uncomfortable seconds later, and just before take-off, the flight was aborted. While the press party on board must indeed have thanked the pilot for his superlative judgement in scrapping the take-off, eavesdropper does feel a bit sorry for the beleaguered airline. What could be worse than an inaugural flight developing a technical snag under the nose of an ever-nosy media?

Sellers’ loop
Indian companies prospecting for business in France at a European Commission-designated ‘International Buyers’ Exposition’ or IBEX in Lille were a little ‘under-whelmed’ by the response. The convention of some of the biggest European (mostly French) corporations shopping for e-commerce software from some 150 vendors from across Europe (and six from India) was the first of its kind, and the action was conspicuous by its absence. Eavesdropper happened to be there at the kind invitation of the organisers, but, frankly, the organisation of the event left quite a bit to be desired. For one, the promised online matchmaking exercise (to cut through the clutter and schedule productive meetings between buyers and software vendors after matching requirements and offerings) didn’t quite materialise. And then, some of the Indian companies ended up meeting vendors with an almost identical product/solution line-up. “A case of seller meeting seller,” one of the Indian software executives remarked wryly.