Learning From Levi Strauss

“Real estate players gained from IT revolution, not engineers” – Screams the ET headline and continues…………

Former Karnataka IT Secretary Vivek Kulkarni said the starting salary of an engineer in the year 2000 when he was holding the position was Rs three lakh, a figure which has remained the same even today.

“What about real estate ? Suppose you buy a real estate in JP Nagar in Bengaluru in 2000 and you want to buy now, what’s the difference?. It must have gone up eight to ten times. That means the fruits of our IT revolution has not gone to engineers, it has gone to real estate people,” he told .

But then what’s new? Different time, different place. But the basic story remains the same…..

During the California Gold Rush, Levi Strauss sold dry goods to miners. One of these items was  durable trousers suited to the rough conditions in which miners worked in. This was the origin of jeans and the Levi Strauss brand.

Every time there is a Gold Rush of one or other kind, and there is always invariably one, if you are alert, there is always more than one way to make money.