Conferences: Learning from the Learned

Sorry for a long hiatus from my side. Since my last note, I made a trip to the Middle East and India. I was also quite caught up in trying to make sense of the chaos on Wall Street. As someone told me recently, "We've put Obama in the office, so I can spend my time on writing again".
Over the past few months, I attended quite a lot of conferences held by organizations like the CII and Tie. In this blog, I want to share some interesting data points I gathered during these sessions:

Indian Economy Stats:
1. Indian Healthcare market is 18BUSD. Its expected to grow to 50 BUSD by 2012.
2. 51% of the assets of the average Indian household is in gold and property. Of this 65% is in CD's, Bonds etc.
3. Leverage in the Indian economy is the lowest in Emerging markets (Mortgages as % of economy India:8%, China 14% and Korea is 23%)
4. 225 of the Fortune 500 companies have Engg centers in India.
5. Indian Land Allocation Act is Based on the 1894 acquisition act. Hence we have Nano like situations.
6. Indian faces a shortage of 1 million hospital beds and 150k hotel rooms.

US Economy Stats:
Most of these are excerpts from a talk I heard President Bill Clinton deliver.

1. In the last 10 years,of the net growth in US economy 40% was housing and rest was Debt based growth.
2. American Cancer Association predicts 1 in 8 cancer patients will die sooner due to lesser quality health care.
3. Increasing number of Americans will not get MRI's (because they wont afford the copay)
4. Over the next decade Type II diabetes will double (especially in kids)
5. In Nevada (worst hit) 1 in 75 homes faces foreclosure.
6. Last year US had 1.5mn foreclosures. This year its 2mn. If stimulus does not work it will be 2.5mn in 2009.
7. Cost of 1 foreclosure is 250k (for the economy). With 2.5mn foreclosure do the math for impact to bail out package (its quite scary!)
8. Engines of growth for the US economy will be Energy ( for next10 year) followed by Biotech for the next 10.

Some Interesting quotes:
From a European on doing business in India "In India you will get patience if you dont have it. You will lose it if you have it"

Bill Clinton on delivering his views in public: "The good part about being an ex-president is that you can say what ever you want. The sad part is that no one listens"

Winston Churchill on Americans: " Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing....after they have exhausted all other possibilities"