Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of Red Hat Summit 21, virtual conference, I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. We are here with Kevin Martelli, Principal Software Engineer, KPMG. Joining the conversation, Kevin, great to see you. Thanks for coming on. John, thanks a lot for having me. So obviously Red Hat, a lot of action, cloud native, part of IBM now, a lot of talk going on around this growth around cloud. Massive new opportunities, new modern applications being shaped in, super exciting opportunities. First, before we get into all that, tell us about your role at KPMG. Sure, John, thanks. So my role at KPMG, I'm one of our cloud leaders at KPMG where I really help both from an internal perspective, so helping our internal enablement and digitalization, as well as more importantly, helping to deliver solutions and applications to our clients as they go through these digital journeys and really focusing on containerization and enablement through the cloud. You guys have done a lot of AI work, which is cutting edge, really much data-driven. I mean, AI is, I mean, what everyone talks about, but underlying AI is automation, data, machine learning, really dealing with kind of new types of data sets, not just dealing with existing structures. You have a new platform called Ignite. Tell us what that is, what do you guys solve? What was the problem statement and what's going on with it? Yeah, John, thanks a lot for asking. So Ignite is something that we developed internally initially and was really helped to solve our AI initiatives. We called it our AI platform, but it's more so an ecosystem. And it solves not only our own internal needs and internal use cases, but also it's used to help, you know, support and deliver these solutions to clients. One of the foundational principles of our platform is it's built on top of containerization, which we know is a hot area now today and the marketplace really gives you the ability for scalability, flexibility, security, et cetera, but more important, what we're seeing large-scale adoptions in our clients is using this platform to really get value out of both unstructured and structured data in a way that they're able to do this in a secured fashion and then easily get it deployed. It's a pretty scalable platform and something that has just recently received a patent for it. So what was the internal conversation to put this together? Was it the fact that there was business needs, cloud native gave you that scale advantage? What was some of the drivers behind Ignite? Was it IoT, take us through the mindset, what were some of the first principles around building this? Yeah, John, Max, it's a good question and actually to be fair, this was probably a little bit before the time of IoT and some of these newer technologies were coming up and at this time, we were really kind of scratching on the surface of data science and advanced analytics and what really generated the need for this is, as you can imagine, working at a consultancy firm and many of our clients deal with tons of contracts and the live board documents for financial services. There was so much rich information in these unstructured data documents and we had no way to get this information out. So really it was generated out of the needs who get information out of a lot of these contractual documents that we had and pinpoint specific information. So really taking it holistically on ingestion, on transformations, running NLP algorithms, it really evolved into a whole end-to-end complete platform, running on top of a containerized ecosystem such as OpenShift. Yeah, I think, not to go on a tangent here, but I think one of the conversations we've been having on all these events and certainly with COVID was the highlight of all these silos and you know, the old days was about break down the silos, but now with containers and cloud scale, you can extract out data, kind of create that horizontal data plane, if you will, or view observation space, some call it. I mean, that seems to be a huge trend. You guys were on it early. How was that? What's your take on that? I mean, the silos used to be kind of like an advantage if you had a monolithic application, but now you have a lot of diverse distributed databases. What's your take? Yeah, it's good. How we are kind of coining it is really through the power of some of the tooling and OpenShift that really gives organizations the ability to defer risk, right? In the sense that allows you to run certain types of workloads on-prem and apply the cloud containerized way. It allows you to burst certain other types of workloads into the different CSP providers so you can get advantage of their scale, their capacity without maybe moving some sensitive data. And then another benefit with some of that vendor lock-in that sometimes clients are concerned about is being able to kind of easily deploy your workloads and applications from one cloud provider to another. And I think as we look at this distributed processing, no one client will totally be in one cloud provider. So having the ability to move workloads quickly and fastly where they make sense, where the security and risk is aligned is something that would make successful use cases deployments. Let me ask you the question.  You've got clients that you serve and ultimately they have customers as well. So you have that Red Hat equation. What are some of the advantages that you guys see at your firm and your clients with Red Hat analytics? Cause this becomes ultimately the number one conversation. It's like, okay, what's in it for me? Yeah, that's a good point. I was saying we're seeing a few things. Some of them are highlighted. One is as you're well aware, we chose Red Hat's open shift as one of our strategic options to deploy our platform. And whenever you're deploying these platforms, it's very important that you have the flexibility, the agility and the ability to scale. And Red Hat underneath the hood really helps take care of a lot of that for you in a way that not only can you do it on your own as mentioned earlier, your private cloud, but also onto the public CSPs and multiple CSPs. In addition, some of the other things I think that we saw that were very beneficial. A lot of times as an application user, so application users will ignite the developers, the data scientists, the business users, the analysts, they all need to interact with the platform. They want to worry about getting the insights about getting the efficiencies of the platform. They don't want to worry about how the infrastructure is being put together, how the workloads are being moved, how the scalability is occurring, et cetera. And Red Hat really takes a lot of that away from you having to worry about it. And one of the other, I think things that's also important is, we have a strategic relationship with Red Hat. And as we look to help to enhance and develop these capabilities and experiences as our clients are doing private cloud, hybrid cloud and multi-cloud, we're really going to be able to let them take the power of open source into their own control and how they want to deploy it themselves. Well, I got you on the topic there. I got to ask you the question. What would you say to the people out there that haven't really kicked the tires on Red Hat in a while? What's the modern update? How would you describe the current situation at Red Hat for people who are going to read, look and or bring the Red Hat conversation up a notch? Yeah, it's a good question. I think we see this in any type of software in the industry today. There's so many choices and there's so many options out there. And how do you choose the right source for the right use case, for the right client, for the right company? And how we always like to talk with clients is that, yes, there are a lot of choices in there in the orchestration for containerization. But when you're looking for something that's the breed of the market that has the security built into it that many organizations are looking for, that gives you the flexibility without having to do a lot of additional operational overhead of moving from on-premium to the clouds and the way that it can scale and kind of make the overall ecosystem operations and deployments easier. It's one of the benefits we see if going with a tool like Red Hat OpenShift. Well, Kevin, I really appreciate the comments there and on Red Hat, that's awesome. Red Hat Summit is obviously a big event around Red Hat and future cloud and modern applications. So I got to ask you as a software engineering leader in the industry, you got to be pretty excited about artificial intelligence and machine learning as it relates to what it can be doing for changing the software development paradigm. Obviously, there's also no code, low code serverless, you got cloud native, you got containers. You get all this new capability. So how do you see those trends? What are the big trends around machine learning and AI as it relates to someone who's going to be building modern applications in the cloud? Because certainly there's a huge upside there. Some are saying that if you don't have AI, that's going to be a table stakes and will lower the valuation of the software or the application. What's your take on all these big trends around AI? Yeah, I agree with that. And we've actually done several studies and what we're hearing industry leaders saying is it was quite a few things. One is we KPMG coin COVID-19 whiplash. And really what that means is that the pace and acceleration of adoption in AI has been tremendous over the COVID-19 period of our pandemic period. So much so that industry leaders are a little bit concerned about how fast this adoption's going and is it going too fast? In addition, we recently published a study called Thriving in an AI World where we were able to identify that business leaders and insiders are really bullish on to your point of using AI and ML to make some more critical decisions. How can we make vaccines? What's the distribution process? Fraudulent analytics for financial services. However, what I will say is we're still seeing a lot of questions and challenges around AI, its security, its ethics associated to it, right? How can you manage it and govern it in your process? Then privacy associated to it. So there's a lot of points around those areas. I think that industries are still trying to struggle and figure out how to solve for. And one of the things that we are hearing is that with the new administration, there's different think tanks and industry leaders that are feeling that the new administration while open to a lot of these advanced techniques and technologies are going to put a little bit more rigor around and regulations around how AI can be used in the marketplace. So hopefully that will give some companies guidance around these security and privacy and ethics concerns. Yeah, that's interesting. I was talking to a friend the other day who's a leader at a big company that's a customer of Red Hat and a lot of other clouds as well. And we were joking about the agility, speed. Oh, agility and speed. Of course, yeah, you get that with here. But you got a lot of fast and loose situations going here. You got to know when to put the pedal to the metal. When there's a straight and narrow, you can really kind of gas it with AI and machine learning and then know where the potential curves are. She will use that metaphor because you can go fast but with speed comes dangerous new things for breakage. Just always, and you're seeing that all the time. You're seeing that with software because you could push new update. But still, when you talk about operational integrity and security, fast and loose isn't always the best way to go. But if you know there's a straight and narrow, you can really push it. This is what we were saying. It's like, hey, we know when to go straight and narrow, go fast and then when to slow it down, pull it back. What's your take on that? What's your assessment? No, I agree. I think you hit some valid points there. And sometimes what we do is we take some antiquated processes and we overlay them into these newer technologies and we try to think them as being the same way. And they may not always hold true, but it's not only kind of fast and narrow and then putting things in it may be a little bit more simplistic, but it's also, there's a whole change around how you production-alized. How do you get these things into deployment? How do you monitor these over time? So some of those biases or some of those privacy concerns don't end up creeping up into the algorithm over time. I still think that what we're hearing from industries are still struggles around that. There's still struggles around, there's a lot of technologies that can do a lot of these same things. Our business processes don't always align. And then how do we really take something from an innovation, from a POC, into production, right? Is there a fast track for something that is straight and narrow and something that has a little bit more complexity? But what we're seeing today is a lot sort of spiral of the same road which makes bringing more complex AI algorithms into production challenging. Yeah, and there's always that big trend of day two operations, which is, hey, you deploy, it's great. And then, okay, wait a minute, stuff's starting to break. We need better monitoring. We need better data analytics. What's instrumented? What's not? What services are being generated and terminated? These are all big cloud native kind of themes. With that, I got to ask you from a customer standpoint, these are new first generation problems at scale with this new cloud native environment, the pros and cons. How do you guys talk to customers? What are some of the things you're seeing around the challenges that they face with analytics, all this analytic activity? Yeah, so I think one of the challenges, and we've probably heard this year in, year out is around data literacy, right? Like really having our folks understand the data and empowering them to be successful in the organization. And to be fair, I would say data literacy was a little bit more narrowly focused in organizations who needed it. I need some analysts to use it. I needed some data scientists and engineers. But what we're starting to see now is there's larger programs across the board where it's more holistic at an organizational level. Everyone should be involved in data. Everyone should be able to do their own reporting. So really data literacy and getting data kind of into the arms of the folks is important. Some of the other ones that we've also kind of talked to about, and they kind of go hand in hand and maybe a little bit on our prior conversation was the technologies. Technology, especially in open source, is exploding as well as commercial, right? So how do you choose the right technologies, the right tools? You don't have too many tools in your toolbox per se, but use the ones that are really differentiating and try to standardize on the ones that are more standard. Finally, it's bringing those processes and wrapping them back into the technologies. Again, a little point we hit on earlier, but what we're finding is as technology is rapidly increasing, you're able to use it for your analytics, your processes are still antiquated and legacy processes, which makes it a little bit harder for you to really take advantage of what you're trying to achieve in your organization from a digital transformation. And then one final one I would add in there is around the risk that organizations have, right? So there's a lot of concern about reputational risk if they're doing these types of activities that people don't understand the data, they don't understand the algorithms, are there some impacts that can be had and they're figuring out how to control that and then how not to. And then I think finally the workforces, as we know, it's getting the workforce up to speed, retooling where need be and putting their people in the right place to be successful. Kevin, that's great insight. Thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. I got to ask you one final question, one more thing. You know, you mentioned COVID whiplash. I mean, there's a lot of post-COVID activity, discussions going on. If you look at what's happened with COVID, there's been an exposure of all the projects that need to be doubled down on ones that may not be continuing. People working at home, obviously a change of the environment. You mentioned workforces among others. What do you think the biggest conversation around your customer base or within KPMG right now around some of these growth strategies around post-COVID? What are companies thinking around how to deploy the people process and technologies, big part of this conversation? What is the post-COVID general theme that you're seeing among large enterprises and business in general? I mean, it's a good question. So I think in general, we're seeing the acceleration of digital agendas that may have been pushed out for five years, pulling you in closer. But one of the most interesting things I think that I've gathered out of working with the clients that we're working with is that, before they get stuff into production, AI solutions, even any type of smaller production system, it was taken months, several months to get something in production. And it seemed to be once the COVID pandemic hit, organizations can accelerate that journey of deployment of applications into production in very, very quick timeframes without hindering or impacting any types of control frame once they have in place, but just working quicker. So I think some of the things I see as we move forward is that these digital agendas are going to be pulled forward more quicker. The day this POC is good or a pilot's good is long past. It's now they want to see the results and the outputs and the enterprise in production. And I think they realize that they have the tools to do this in a period of time that is weeks versus months and if some cases years. So would you agree then, just as a quick follow up to that, that obviously when we get back to real life post COVID, that the visibility and the economics and the productivity gains from this new environment is going to stay around longer and be permanent, what's your, do you agree with that statement? I hope it is, but we are creatures of habit and sometimes we go back to the way that we have done things, but I'm hopeful that they were able to see that be successful in these types of environments and make these types of decisions that those processes start evolving to take into consideration what we learned going this terrible pandemic and be able to apply that to post pandemic. Who would have known the word hybrid cloud actually means something more than just cloud technologies, hybrid events, hybrid workforces, the word hybrid has been kicked around. Kevin, thanks so much for coming on theCUBE here with Red Hat Summit Coverage. Thanks for coming on. Great insight. Thank you. I'm John Furrier with theCUBE here for Red Hat Summit Coverage 2021 virtual. Thanks for watching.


The Philip J. Pierre administration's one laptop per child policy is in full swing. On September 8, the Entrepot Secondary School received its consignment of Google Chromebooks. The new devices will be distributed among first, second and third form students enrolled at the Entrepot Secondary School. Prime Minister Hon. Philip J. Pierre, on hand to officially hand over the Chromebooks, used the occasion to engage the student body and encouraged the young learners to take advantage of the government-sponsored tools and resources in their pursuit of academic achievement. A laptop will be made available to you so that you can educate yourself. That is what is going to happen. There is no distinction when it comes to education. Every solution has a right to education. Every solution has a right to aspire to be the best it can be. We want to develop a country of meritocracy, a country where what you put in is what you put out. And this is the best opportunity. This is the best opportunity for you. Now you are at school. This is a time when your priorities must be towards your education. There are going to be diversions. There are going to be times when you believe you should not be here. Sometimes being on the block might be more attractive. It might even cause you more joy. But remember, you have a future not for the country, not for your parents, but for yourself. If you do better, your parents will be happy and the country will be happy. The Pierre administration is committed to ensuring every St. Lucian household produces a university graduate. The one laptop per child policy, along with the implementation of strategic education reforms, are among the tangible policy directives that brings this objective within reach for future generations of St. Lucian students. The opportunities are equal. You have to grab it with both hands. You have to grab it with both hands. And I always say to people, to children when I speak to them, to young people, anybody can make it. When I started in this business, few people thought I'd ever become the prime minister of St. Lucia. Few people thought so, and I didn't blame them.  Few people thought so. But I always knew for myself that if I worked hard, if I was dedicated, if I was disciplined, and if I had a few people to assist me, I would have made it. And if I made it, everybody can make it. Everybody can make it. The Pierre administration has distributed tens of thousands of devices to students since coming into office last August from the office of the prime minister, Rihanna Isidou.


Are there any questions? Any questions? Yes. How do you think we should deal with nervousness when we are presenting? Good questions. I think we can assume that in the early stage we feel most nervous. It's best to be ready for this. If you've done your preparation well, I think it's just a question of rehearsing before the presentation. It might be with a friend who can give you some feedback. Is that okay? Yes, thank you. Okay. Would anyone else like to raise a question? I was wondering what we can do if we get a hard question or question we can't answer. Right. An important point. First, give yourself a little time to think. By saying, for example, yes, an interesting question. Or just, I don't think there's any easy answers. You need some time to think. But if you have information somewhere you can say, I don't have the details at hand right now. But if you leave me a contact address, I'll get back to you as soon as I can. Yes, I think so. And sometimes you could try in general terms to answer the questions. But say you need to find fuller details later. Have we answered your questions? That's fine, yes. Thanks.


Sophie end of a before and after pictures, I will fight to live.  But suddenly she is facing a string of haters on social media and she is pleading with the public. I'm doing the right thing. I will fight to live, she said. Social media went crazy over the weekend when photos of Sophie hit the internet. The much-loved actress, Sophie Likaba, 46, who previously played the popular role of Queen Moroka on Generations, has set the record straight about her weight loss. She hit back at poisonous haters through her Instagram account after comments on social media. People commit suicide because of pressure from negative heartless people, she said. I'm just surprised that grown people share such heartless opinions when families are praying, fasting for goodness and health. I fight daily to live for my children and family. Sophie said she turned herself around and lost weight by eating healthy, which she does not regret. I will never hide for anyone. Life is too precious. I'm sending my love to all friends and family concerned about my weight and health, she posted. Living with diabetes does not mean my life must stop. I made a conscious choice to eat properly and lose weight, said the actress. I want to encourage those who are struggling with obesity and say don't worry what people think even if they will think you're dying. Sophie said being overweight landed her in hospital, hence the decision on weight loss. I will eventually reach my weight goal through healthy eating. I am excited that God allowed me to go through this test to save lives. Fortunately people have responded positively on social media, encouraging Sophie to stay strong. She was diagnosed three years ago, she told Daily Sunday I found out walking in a mall after a lunch meeting. Suddenly I could not read shop front wording and names. I walked slowly to a pharmacy to buy a diabetes tester and I was on 19 instead of a regular average reading of six. Treating my late parents allowed me to identify I might be diabetic, said Sophie. Monitoring a healthy eating lifestyle was key, and remember eating healthy is not cheap either. She urged people with diabetes to make sure they are home tested twice a day and to create a chart that monitors consistency and inconsistency of sugar levels. It was important to know when to drink a lot of water and take walks to bring sugar levels down. I would like to tell Mzansi to stop labeling when we see drastic body changes. There is TV which is not necessarily linked to HIV. People with chronic disease are more prone to get different illnesses because their immune system is low. Give support, encouragement, and neighborly love. These heartless assumptions must stop. It's an evil act.


Welcome back to JSA TV and JSA podcast where we're covering the latest stories trends and innovations from leaders across the digital Infrastructure industry. I am Keeley Dorian here at PTC and I am joined now by Niraj Shah with IAX to Africa winning the award I might say for dedication as you've had some insane flight delays But we're so happy that you're here and you made it. Thanks. Thanks. Keeley. It's yeah It's been it's been actually very very difficult to get you where was fine I mean you're 36 hours flying flight cancellations, but I'm here It's the dedication and yeah, you know, it's the conference to be at. It is the conference to be at You definitely don't want to miss it and we're so happy to have you joining us once again on JSA TV Well for for those who don't know do you want to just give us a quick overview of IAX Africa? Of course doing a lot of with In East Africa when it well, you'll describe it better than me. So I'll let you go. Thanks So we've gained a lot of momentum, you know, we started about two years ago and we had the first Campus built for the first building for the first campus, which is four and a half megawatts of it power Which is now live, but we intend going to 22 and a half megawatts We are actually the first hyperscale data center in eastern Central Africa And we've actually set the trend now quite a few of the competitions now looking at, you know Getting that traction together and building so but we're we're a couple of years ahead We're actually going to the next step of getting a second campus done Which is about 30 kilometers away from where we are which kind of suits what the hyperscalers would like in terms of redundancy So, yeah, we're we're actually quite happy with the progress we've made and Now that we are live with a lots lots and lots of connectivity providers come again IXPs have come in we brought in links Nairobi into Nairobi Call links Nairobi and now links will obviously spread their wings as well amongst Kenyan data centers But you know clearly we are the guys who brought them in and they're doing a lot with us And obviously it's going to really boost the whole connectivity hub element of Kenya So yeah, that is the plan and we're forging ahead. Yeah doing such great work and in a big market That's coming on to the scene. So let's talk about sustainability I know that is a very key pillar for you as you continue to grow the company Absolutely, and one of the benefits and I think I mentioned a couple of times that Kenya is actually very green It's actually 93% renewable energy, but the beauty of it is it's actually hydroelectric and Geothermal as well as wind and solace. It's actually got all elements coming in now and the wind is taking a very very big factor as well So when one of the key requirements when we talk to the hypers is how sustainable are you? So our entire data center is powered by renewable energy and the fact that we also have this keep it Africa Theme that we go with we make sure that we are not really spreading our carbon footprint in a big way So everything's locally Rick, you know, we try and get everything locally as much as we can We make sure we have the companies that support us that they have their agencies in Kenya itself Or in the region to make sure that there is no downtime from them. So very strict on how we're doing all of this Yeah, so let's talk about you mentioned some growth plans already with looking at a second campus And we're talking about sustainability. So as you continue to grow, of course data centers need a lot of power Which is not always as sustainable as we would like it to be So how are you looking at that growth and how do you plan to continue to be sustainable as you grow? Yeah, so there are a couple of things that are happening in Kenya particularly is the fact that it's renewable no doubt 93% but there's a lot of Incentive to actually generate your own power as you go along at some point They will do wheeling where you will be able to actually Sell your power. That's more than that you may require onto the grid So so there's obviously one element that a lot of the companies would look at It's a lot more in the manufacturing side of the sector, right? But from a data-setting perspective for 22 and a half megawatts. We need a lot of power So there are ways and means of how we will actually try and minimize what we would use by say solar in terms of our Administrative use right a megawatt or two megawatts, but as we go to twenty two and a half. No doubt. We're we're actually Gonna be using the the grid power which is renewable But there are lots of other innovations that are coming in now There's biodiesel that you can use for your redundancy generators But you can also there is a now a movement to actually start generating green hydrogen So that's still like in the making, but it's a big possibility. What you need for that is a lot of hydroelectric So more rivers more water is required and it's generated through it's I mean in a basic way It's a lot of electrolysis that you that you'd use to generate green hydrogen. So In essence Kenya's got a lot of potential to generate different renewable energy And that's where we're gonna try and tap into all of this and then perhaps as time goes by with the land That we have acquired we've acquired more land Further furthest I think it's further north actually from where we are and that's 11 acres Which also has the possibility of wind and also, you know generating at a small level hydroelectric So yeah, you know We're looking at sustainability and power in a big way that is the name of the game Which is the other thing that you know when you get into AI there's a huge demand for power Right and you want that power to be green So we're already gearing up towards that in what whatever we're doing. So, you know We're a couple years ahead of what we want to what we will probably see happening So we're already planning for that. Yeah, a lot of exciting things to come It sounds like so definitely not slowing down any time soon. It'll refer it. I ex-Africa Is there anything else that you want our viewers to know about? Oh, yeah, well, yeah You know we're based out of Nairobi in Kenya, which is the capital city and it's actually a market You mentioned that but Kenya well Nairobi serves up to 400 million people in different countries from the East African side So it's a huge. It's a massive market. I think now with a hyper cloud Coming in they're looking at these markets. So Yeah, we're ready and I think they've come in without a couple of hypers come in and have a look at what we have and They're well impressed with what we built especially to see something that big that developed in Kenya Mostly they're all small data centers. So so yeah, we're ready and come on in it's exciting stuff Well, thank you so much for stopping by JSA TV during your brief time here at PTC I hope you get to enjoy the rest of the show and have a really productive meeting that meeting schedule ahead. Yeah Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Keely. It was great to be here. Thank you. Thank you again for joining us And thanks to our viewers for tuning in stay connected


Hi everyone, this is Shanali. Thank you all for coming out some time for attending today's webinar on the episode 24 of the Business X learning series in where scale, value and exit. To all the attendees out there, please type in any questions you might have in the Q&A section and we'll try to answer as many as possible at the end of the session. I would now like to welcome our speaker, Mr. Gaurav Mariah, Chairman and Founder of the Franchise India Group. A very warm welcome to you, sir. Thank you, Sonali and thanks for hosting this session and my apologies for missing out the last session because of some emergency. So this is a 24th session where we talk about every time a different topic. So sometimes we talk about how to scale your business, sometimes we talk about how to exit your business. We talk about investing and value. So today's topic is value. I will do a little bit of refresher in terms of what needs to be done when people are looking to value their businesses and I feel that this is a very critical time. A lot of people, a lot of companies, a lot of business owners are looking to value their businesses for various reasons and they're looking for a future investment in the business. They are looking for getting an M&A situation. They want to look at an exit from a business. For multiple reasons, I think you need to really value your business and it is good to continue to value your business and see where you stand and how the business is performed and so on and so forth. And I feel that most of the times if you're running a business and you don't know the value, you're actually driving a ship which has actually you've not gone into say understanding why you're doing it because end of the day, therefore any business to really perform and see there should be end of the tunnel. There should be end of the tunnel for shareholders to really see where they want to exit or they want to find some long-term value from the business. And that's very important and now these days we get a lot of companies reaching out to us and have a perception about themselves in terms of the value they've not gone and taken advice from somebody who's a professional and now it is required to have a professional registered evaluator who would come and work on your asset and understand what the value really is. So today's session we will divide this into three parts. One I'll take you through the what I call the 10 areas which to me set the valuation of any organization. These are very very important aspects and you need to really maybe make a notes on that that what are the 10 points which you need to really see where you stand in your businesses and they would be really very very critical when you're putting up a valuation of the business and then we'll go into a little bit of what you need to do to structure your valuation document they call the information memorandum. What all needs to be covered on that what kind of information is required on that so that's would become the second part of the valuation document what are the checklist which you need to really have for your valuation document. So let's get started and in the meantime if you have any questions for me you can go on a Q&A box and just ask those questions and we'll be more than happy to really advise you on that or any information you would require will be more than happy to help you on that. So Q&A box on the bottom just go on and ask your question and I'll at the end of the session would be happy to take that. So the 10 points which would set the the valuation for your business are following one you need to really discover your inherent strength this is very important this is actually connecting a lot of dots to really come down to a point where you have this inherent strength and this is to me sometimes is a missing point we think that the businesses are just about top line bottom line answer is no there is much more to any business and much more to this end and that's why it gives you surprising a lot of these young startups sometimes get a phenomenal amount of valuation because there is something which is much more inherent in the business model which is so attractive to our investor to evaluate at a certain level and sometimes large businesses family-run businesses running for many many years don't get that kind of valuation just because they don't have they've run the business purely as a commodity and and and like a trading companies like if you are trading company or an importer you buy something in and then further sell it out you more or less are doing a dollar plus kind of a model cost plus model kind of a structure and you are a pass through you have no inherent value which you are building in and that's something which is sometimes looks like a good income businesses but they don't have any any sort of valuation I have seen businesses which are 500 crore in turnover 1000 crore in turnover but really if you go out and see the valuation of the businesses they have nothing they are just pass through in in that nature so what we need to ask yourself is what kind of a business advantage you really bring in what advantage you are bringing in are you a entry barrier to somebody a lot of businesses eventually get successful like these days EV is becoming a very big space the electric vehicle space and I've been approached by about not more than a minute I think should be about 20 odd companies which have approached us in these are startups and some mature companies now mature companies are running for larger market share quickly go in the market and capture as many markets you need to do that and sometime this early stage company also want to follow the same route which I am advising not to do that I'm saying go and take up one city one of the companies was in Goa and I said just follow Goa itself create an entry barrier in Goa don't go and put your dealerships everywhere you cannot service them you will not be able to launch your products you will not be able to aftermarket don't even worry you know go and focus on one market and create a stronger entry barrier somewhere when the consolidation would start happening which would happen I think two years from now two and a half year three years from now where they will see a lot of acquisition happening in this space currently there are about a hundred different startups which have come in the market I think a hundred more would emerge so these 200 would actually then come down to 2030 and then eventually to the game 89 the big boys would be there so there would be some players which would go that high and you have big competition you have Ola announcing that they are doing a 2500 crore plant investing into e-vehicles you have some other companies today I saw Bajaj saying that they also want to put up a big plant with Maharashtra government with 650 crore investments so the boys are also coming but if you're building your market share quickly then you will get a chance to do that but you need to go deeper and create an entry barrier another thing which is always I like about businesses that what kind of problem they are solving what is the larger problem they are trying to solve and how this can help even other organizations to really go out and capture you because you have actually addressed that problem and you're very close to solving the problem and this is where one of the companies I advised was actually a company which used to do business on diabetics and a big insurance company really saw a value in them because they had a huge amount of data of people who were diabetic and and this was health insurance large company and they they felt that data can play a very important role for them and and things of the nature sometimes you have some problem which you're solved and that problem or that which can help other other businesses to look at it so you need to really see what problem your business is trying to solve that's one point so discover your inherent strength and just play on that and make sure that you are much deeper into that rather than just going wider and and spreading thin the second piece to me is obviously profitability you know in short time or a mid term you need to really show profitability it's not no more a system especially post-COVID nobody everybody is interested to really look at a very very long-term profitability they're looking at sometime in short term or looking at a mid term of profitability where do you really stand how do you really demonstrate the profitability that's very important third is how do you demonstrate your increasing of cash flows and margins again these are two different parts you know a lot of people are able to demonstrate their increased cash flows but they're not able to really give answers on how they would improve their margins to me this is more important cash flows is still in a strategy base more marketing more advertising more markets to go you can still increase your cash flows but how do you want to demonstrate that you want to improve your margins is more important and more value fourth point is how long to go and unlock your value in which markets you want to go so one of the areas which is very exciting for me is that are you making a brand which is global and if that is a case then one of the markets you want to do at what phase you would like to go this is very very important to me and if a good investor especially global investor wants to look at it you would like to look at it how how much this business model has a has a strength to spread how far it can go and that's something which is which is becoming the biggest becoming larger the larger is becoming very very large companies so that's how the scale is going look at the companies like oil rooms I mean they can go to 80 countries very very fast while there is challenges in the business now but fundamentally this business model was extremely globally scalable so why would you not have an opportunity which can go into multiple markets think a much larger spread can come to your businesses finally fifth point is how do you really do what I call the your diversified consumer base you cannot be just focused on one and like these days if you were to say supplier to one industry say you are doing something with hospitality and hospitality is shut and and then what would you do so if I was a technology product and only doing hospitality and then if this has been now in that stage if business is eroded so you need to really see how do you diversify your current consumer base the sixth point is how do you demonstrate controls and compliances in your business a lot of good businesses really lack this part so they don't really put emphasis on on control and compliances any good startup these days I am looking at it has a strong financial control and they demonstrate that financial control in in depth and that's something which investors love it I've seen a lot of investors walked out of their deals because they felt that the business was a little bit of mystery they didn't understand that how it was really that thing or it was too too cloned to the control with the with the founder and founder was running businesses like his own thing not like an independent enterprise and and investors don't want to touch it another area which is very important which is seventh point is that how is your resistance towards not becoming commoditized maybe you are at this stage sitting on a business model which is uprising great to move in that thing but how do you ensure that your business would not become commoditized in coming time what kind of differentiation you would continue to create so that you are able to retain your margins or improve your margins or retain your customers which will not move in just because you become commoditized now sometimes it was brand in the consumer days it was brand sometime it was technology sometime it was something else which is very patent to you which you could control them I think so you need to really ask yourself what is your control mechanism that your product or service would at a certain stage would not become commoditized that you would have still a preference point to retain your customer would not just move in because of somebody else is offering the same product cheaper than what you're offering or convenient what you are offering at this moment another area which is eighth point is predictability how do you really bring predictability into business which is what I call subscriber base or recurring revenue base how is your recurring revenue base being demonstrated how you are able to really demonstrate that the same customer would have multiple times buy rather it will buy much more frequently in times to come and continue to improve their purchase value so these are points which every investor really love you know because you can demonstrate the same customer would buy over the time many times would one try to buy more often and second would also start buying and putting more money in every single purchase as we go now that something is very very exciting to me this was all e-commerce story e-commerce story was really to demonstrate oh I got this customers they currently buying only 300 rupees per customer they would go to 1000 rupees and they are only buying once in a month they would start buying once in a week and then once every day so if you are able to demonstrate that story you become amazon right so this is what everybody loves everybody loves the life of customer and continue to see that the purchase cycle is reducing earlier you were buying only certain things on amazon now you order almost everything which you consume daily so now they if they come and would allow liquor they would allow dairy they would so all that would also start coming in in the amazon platform because they would like to bring in customers happy to come down to almost daily and that's where the value would really be built ninth point is what is your replacement value somebody wants to get into the same business but it would take a lot of time for them to get into what you have already done so you have a strong replacement value i'm doing working on a deal where somebody is getting into a business and we are buying into some asset purely for the reasons you can duplicate that business but it'll take you at least one and a half years so so the replacement value was coming in that if they save that one and a half years and we get a ready customer base this is a good good value this normally happens in manufacturing if you go on acquire a manufacturing plant because by the time you order machinery your machinery would come in you will establish the entire thing get your plant licenses and all that would take a lot of time so people would go and value something and just buy it out because they know that this there has a strong replacement value and last which is not the least is that are you still a business which is totally dependent on the founder and if that is the case then also it's a very touchy point because they don't like that i mean investors don't like that situation they don't value those businesses businesses have to run by processes and systems a good management team which is very important which creates a good value but not overly dependent on any one individual if it is a too much dependent on one individual that would not run that's why if you see healthcare practices which are run by a particular doctor doesn't get a value because it's too much around him and and there is no way he can be redundant on that business but healthcare practices like Apollo where you are not dependent on one single personality are valued much more and that's where because it's a healthcare brand and it's not really dependent on one professional or one practitioner so this is of the 10 points i'll just repeat it again for anybody who's not made notes inherent strength profitability increasing cash flows and margins unlocking value for new markets diversified consumer base control and compliances resistance towards not being commoditized bringing predictability replacement value for the business and what i call making the owner redundant in his own business you don't have to really be dependent on that now let's get into discussion on if you're creating your what i call a business valuation report what all needs to go there strong organizational structure that's very very important you need to have one obviously you need to hire some some professional to value your business but once you've hired that you wouldn't need to understand your organizational design what is organization design who are the investors in the business and what is a professional team that's very very important and what care has has been allocated to each of them which has to be defined second piece is who's your external consultants any advisors you have you have any kind of attorneys tps consultants any kind of people on retainerships with you all that has to be also very clearly defined then you need to also start working on building your financial statements which would mean your your last financial five years for balance sheets how the balance sheets are filed on a quarterly basis normally about three to five years of historic balance sheet minimum of three years balance sheets are required then you need to also understand your organizational other company structure your legal identity and a lot of people are don't understand the difference sometimes they do i mean i'm seeing a lot of startups coming in which are just limited partnerships kind of structures being used or still using some kind of what i call a sole proprietorship or things of that nature it actually creates much more difficulty because one conversion of these companies to a private limited companies is also a complex process it looks very easy but it is a very very complex process and most of these times when you are running these kind of firms which are more partnerships and structures they are your individual returns would also be calculated so those are also to be presented and sometimes that becomes very weak points on these pieces so really see that what kind of a legal identity structure which you're taking another in in last three to five years any kind of litigations which you had in the business which were not resolved and there's a lot of times these litigations look like very simple because from a business owner viewpoint when you run a business you're prone to some kind of exposure and you might have some notices which were which are lying or some kind of cases which suits been filed which are not being addressed those can create a big roadblock because you might have your viewpoint on them because you can see that that's not going to be too damaged entirely but from somebody who's looking to buy a business they don't want to jump into entirely so it can sometimes either stop the the course of that investment or sometimes it can delay because they would have to then invite any kind of external legal advice on that that should they go in should not go in what kind of exposure they are doing and sometimes investors would like to hold some monies of transaction unless and until those are resolved and this can take especially in Indian courts many many many years by the time the settlements can come because there was a pending dispute and now you saw one of the big deals which Reliance did with Future they also at that level didn't understand that there was a side agreement being done with Amazon which can create a trouble in this deal and this can get go even more complex going forward and so it can be that they have captured that they knew that if Reliance looking at Reliance as a company they would 100% knew and they would have actually held a lot of monies to Future on that perspective so my guess is that Future would not be paid those monies unless and until they are out of this whole thing and which can actually further trouble Future because they were selling those assets in that company purely to get some remittances coming from Reliance and they would not do that unless and until this is over with them so it can be actually for a seller it can be a double trouble because on one side you've gone business is gone second side you not got your own monies in the complete sense because and you are also now fighting legal structures outside so you need to really see is there any kind of illegal cases which are pending which has to be very clearly defined and on upfront rather than been discovered more it is told upfront more it is better because you're not getting and I think more it is discovered by anybody it creates more complexity so again intellectual property of rights kind of patents you have copyrights you have trademarks you have any kind of service marks you have all that at what stage they are at what stage they need to be renewed all the licenses which you've got what stage they are when they're going to be renewed all that needs to be very very clear now very critical part we will discuss is these adjustments in your financials you know we get reports on financials every single day and when we start reading those numbers there are a lot of numbers which are which are good for our perspective but they are not good for you know from a valuation viewpoint they are weaker points sometimes in the say assets some assets are not critical assets for the business except you know their assets which are available in the business and people feel happy because they bought some property or they have some you know cars on the you know in the balance sheet and these look like an assets but they are not critical they are not doing anything to the business you know business owners buy these things because they want to put it in the company but fundamentally it's not adding any value to the company so when the valuation really starts or the investor looks at it it takes out all the assets so that has no meaning to entirely sometimes extra cash you know people put FDs in businesses and these FDs are lying there because you just want to hold some money normally this is discounted and the earlier owners can really take that money and only the working capital can be left in the business which can be accounted for so those are also not really part of the entire thing non-ranking income items there are a lot of non-ranking income items if you see the balance sheet of Unilever every year they have sold some assets and they come in their incomes right so but they're non-ranking which means that there was a building or some property lying there which you sold it came in that year's income and that would have to be removed because it would still not be part of the business it was a particular year or a quarter you had that impact because you sold something which was not required so those are kind of things which have to be removed and a lot of times this happens I'm telling about even the company like Unilever if you see the baron balance sheet of Unilever you'll find that from last 15 odd years they've almost been selling some assets which they're older buildings and so on so forth so they do a lot of real estate like this they sell some older ones and they buy new ones there was always a structure which is available which is a good from a financial structure viewpoint but it is obviously not to be counted in the in the in the valuation structures any kind of wages salaries or benefits which are being done or would be done at the current levels not from the past levels and also like these days I'm doing some valuation for businesses where they are talking about the current levels which which is not also realistic because like say for pre-COVID you were on a rental of 9 lakh rupees now because you never shifted for 6-7 months your current rental load is lesser you're also paying some salary cut to your employees but we will have to see the pre-COVID numbers structure owner salaries is a big big challenge owner salaries we are normally counted a lot of times people would say oh because I did my own personal withdrawal that is part of the profitability that becomes very complex to really answer so don't do all that pieces these were a classic style of businesses no more it has a valuable in that uncollectible amounts which have expired so things which have not been collected and don't look like to be collected it sits in your receivables also have to be taken out or any liabilities which you would have can potentially come out you might feel that it's not going to be impacting but might come back on the on the business at a later stage and especially when the big companies buy into smaller units looking at the larger company coming in which has to be more compliant as more exposed as a as a legal identity a lot of unseen unregistered your liabilities in the system would start rising up so normally they would give a cooling period and they would do those announcements hold some money and suddenly you start seeing notices from people coming in look I had this liability Disney number this number and it can become very very complex even a company like run back see was sold at a normal valuation the big story at that time and later the new owners got into huge trouble because they bought so much coming out from libraries which was not recorded receivables which were shown was never caught patents which were told in the US so much existing was expired so a lot of challenges it really started coming in and they had a almost 20 years of war a legal war and eventually they won and there was a big penalties we passed on to the earlier owners because of the misrepresentation of their facts and so forth finally you also have to really talk about how your industry view what is your industry telling you what where do you stand in your own industry how you're positioning towards your competition where are you in terms of your competitive analysis how much advantage you have over your competition and things of that that's very very important because this would really come out to be one of the most important aspects because most of the times a study buyer would really look at who else is available in the system and why you versus any other asset they want to really acquire so what you bring in as a as a special advantage to your competitive landscape now finally I'll just do a summary of if you are writing your own information memorandum following should be the cases which you need to really put as a head first put a brief history about your business sharp but don't go overdo it but talk about the history of the business from from where you founded what was the reason you to found to where it is and what is the future looks like and that's how your business has to be defined go into very detail of very clear sharp product information don't go too much outside but go very sharp on the product information or a service information what do you stand for what is your value proposition who's your target group why the target group would continue to buy you and so forth finally your market position your brand where it stands how your market is perceiving you what is your customers telling you or have they have any kind of data which tells you that they have increased or you know they have purchased decisions with you or continue to do that so especially last four quarters what are they telling you it's an upward trend which is which is very important you need to also talk about your employee and vendors suppliers databases all that organizational design very sharp design how it is done what is a vintage who are the critical resources what are the you know process center owners each process is owned by somebody who's run that what is his background how much domain experience to really contribute that piece who's your primary competitors in the structure so you need to have a very strong competitive graphing in very very position yourself in in your it can be quality versus price it can be markets it can be features it can be multiple graphs people like to understand where you are versus anybody else in the market and where do you see the bigger chunk of consumer bases and which you are trying to address you need to also do a lot of you know you know physical demonstration in your I am I sometimes see a lot of data but doesn't show a lot of you know pictures and so on so use as many pictures you want to do that it's much more better when you're representing to people to see through what you have built and and most of the time especially on the initial pitch stage or initial valuation people are reporting them that thing they like to see the brand experience right so they need to really see the brand experience they don't just won't want to read data data would come obviously when they start the DD process and also any other critical information don't indulge too much in the first I am too many information about the business it is not worth we will go down to when the DD process starts when they would start digging into much more and deeper into the business so this was about valuation we talked about the 10 critical points which were which are the foundational points for your valuation we talked about what is the data which you require to compile when you're putting up a valuation and then finally what should go into your information memorandum document so this was today's session so I would like to invite Sonali to have any questions for me and Sonali over to you please. For a wonderful and insightful session Gaurav sir as always it's been a pleasure having you with us and yes I would now like to take up a few questions that we have so the first question that we have is how to actually improve my valuation if I'm planning to sell as soon as possible what is a realistic time period for improving the valuation in documents? I don't know what is a time period you're looking at to sell a business but I think give yourself a lead time of 180 days that is a rightfully time for any kind of a value-to-term sheet kind of a situation but I feel that even if you want to get realistically valued yourself there's also another 120 to 180 days time so if I have to really see somebody value and then looking for a right kind of investor or a complete MNA situation or an exit situation then you should give yourself a good one-year kind of a scenario and that means the first six months a lot of preparation time now to change the second part of your question was that how do you improve your valuation? I feel that it has to have to do with your business model how do you really address your business model? How do you find a lot of things? I'm these days advising one restaurant chain which obviously wants to either exit or bring in another investor to partial exit of their current investors and I had somebody sitting with them and one of the areas which the founder told me is that he was surprised that a lot of inefficiencies they were running in the business which they worked last because of forced work because of COVID so they were working on say 15 people they now started working with the seven people and they had a lot of back of the house and where they were producing everything live now they created a central kitchen where everything they're doing is frozen or another technology which is now has cut down their expensive cost people so they don't have to have chefs so they have worked on a business model to really turn around and show that the business is much more sustainable high growth and also would improve the margins as we go along so these are a couple of things which investors like investors like to invest in the future how do you become future ready that's something to me is very important so you need to really go back and retwist your business model sometimes you don't do it when we're running when we start designing the business model for building value you need to really go out and say how do I make the business model future ready in future it is it can run another thing which you need to really do is make the business model process oriented so you're not required in the business so that business can be transferred sometimes you know it is too dependent on you and around you and a lot of your own personal skills are required every single day in your business then it will not be able to multiply or find the right one sure next question we have is how to create the valuation report for a startup which obviously has no historical data it's much easier actually if you really ask me you know it's like a doing a painting right so it's a it's much easier for you to really you know put kind of maybe obviously it has to be a search based you need to do a lot of research you need to do some kind of comparative analysis again there I think you need to fundamentally demonstrate three things one is what's the problem you are trying to solve and how big is that problem and why do you think that problem needs solution right now you know some problems are there everything has a problem right and pollution is a problem right this is a problem everything is a problem but sometimes the demand is not urgent demand is not now demand would be has to be addressed everybody knows it but it's not really right now I want to address this problem right now so that's a that's a situation one has to really understand and define then your own value why you are the right person to solve that problem third what would you require to solve the problem so if you are able to justify these three things to invest in your presentation then you're fine so again I'll repeat problem why you're the best guy today to solve the problem and what all you require to solve the problem which means that kind of capital organization team technology and all that this is what people want to see maybe these are three slides that's it absolutely and you have actually answered the next question within this question itself but the question was what information do I need to give in order to get valued and is only the financial information required for it no no financial information is actually 20% of that night 80% is is a lot of other things which are told in the 10 points in in this piece right and again following up on that we have a question that says is a confidential information memorandum mandatory for funding or valuation yeah it is it is it is an essential document mandatory I will not use a word but it is it it's not that is required it's a it's a transaction between two private enterprises so it is not mandatory so to say the word but you need to have it this is this is your so to say a deck which you present for valuation and if it is covered and done by somebody who is respectable on valuation whose own credibility to do valuation is is also very and I think it creates much more weight on on that and the last question many people have asked if you're if our company can help in creating a valuation report that's what business x does so please reach out to Sonali she has a full team and the business x has a full team for business valuations we have senior professionals who work with you on business valuation we also have a fintech product called business equity dot com which is world is number one valuation side we are a joint venture partner for India so that also is a product which creates a valuation for any business and if you're looking to raise capital you can also reach out to business x and if you are also looking to exit your business then also business x can help you sure so with this we'll just wrap up the session thank you so much God observe for your time it has been a pleasure like always to welcome you and hear your insightful thoughts on each of our topics every week and I would also like to thank all our attendees we really hope we were able to add some value to your lives through this session and this is our last session of this year and of course it has been a difficult year for everyone but everyone has come out stronger from it so anything you would like to add in the answer no I would like to wish everybody a very happy new year we will see you in the next year every Saturday we come back and we have this sessions we are also trying to bring in some interesting more topics in the next series which would start from next Saturday and and this is going to be every week every Saturday structure so it's good for when you are it's a refresher for a lot of people who would like to know more about how to really structure the businesses businesses have changed the way that people look at businesses have changed the way the investors were there now the new investors new age investors are very different so it's good to really refresh yourself and continue to be updated on this so stay tuned with business x and we will continue to bring in fresher content for you thank you thank you so much sir and with this I just say everyone a very happy new year and thank you so much for your time


S- S- S- S- NESTRUNK! I really enjoy the heck out of Demolition Man. It's one of the most underappreciated action movies of the 90s. Sure, everyone digs Terminator 2, True Lies, Eraser, Total Recall.  What happened to 80s action icon Sly Stallone? Well, he kind of tapered off a bit with stuff like Stopper My Mom Will Shoot, Oscar, and the abysmal Rocky 5 that everyone collectively wants to erase from history. Out of this stretch of crappy movies, though, came Demolition Man, and it still holds up today as a completely silly, yet fun and well-made action movie featuring a great villain with Wesley Snipes as Simon Phoenix. And I mean, come on, the movie relied on Rob Schneider for comic relief, and somehow it's still a good movie. I'm not sure whether that's more impressive than Arnie carrying Tom Arnold of all people in True Lies, but it's still a Herculean effort. Of course, since it's a Stallone flick, it came paired with several video games on a bunch of platforms. We got Demolition Man on Sega CD, Panasonic 3DO, Sega Genesis, and Super Nintendo, which is what you're seeing here. And yeah, this game is yet another solid but unspectacular licensed game in a long line of them. It's not quite as good as Stuff Like True Lies, Alien 3, or Judge Dread, but it's definitely better than Stuff Like Terminator 2 and Last Action Hero. Heh, take that, Arnold. The main thing Demolition Man has going for it is that it's a run-and-gun title that gives your character quite a bit of flexibility. Sure, there's your typical running and jumping and shooting everything that moves, but you can also ride a zipline while firing at everything, which seriously seems like it came right out of a Contra game, so cool. There's also some platforming here, and the jump, uh, isn't the greatest, but you can roll an even bungee jump, and you also do a fair share of scaling walls and ceilings, too. And, most importantly, there's two top-down shooter stages, which are pretty dang fun, especially when you upgrade your weapon to something stronger. You get three lives and three continues to get through 10 total levels with no saves or passwords. The controls are reasonably intuitive, B jumps, Y shoots, A throws a grenade, and the X button actually allows you to stand still and shoot while using the D-pad to aim instead of move, which a lot of games of this nature at the time lacked. The way this game starts is just awesome. I mean, you're jumping out of a helicopter firing at bad guys. How can you top that? Oh, you top it by doing a Karim Abdul-Jabbar skyhook with a grenade into an enemy's face? Wow, that's how.  But the top-down levels have you recovering hostages, which, uh, unlocks doors somehow. Unfortunately, Demolition Man has some big-time flaws you gotta deal with to enjoy this one. I mentioned how wonky the jump is already, and, yeah, it makes the game feel extremely rigid at times, but worst of all is that jumping and landing from too high of a spot deals damage.  If Mario can land just fine from 80 feet in the air, then what's Sylvester Stallone's problem? Also, I'm sure you've noticed this by now, but enemy projectiles here are extremely tiny. I'm talking, like, one pixel wide. It's frickin' ridiculous. I feel like I need to strap onto my TV an oversized version of one of those old Game Boy magnifier adapter things with the light on it that never worked, just to see anything coming at me. There's also good old-fashioned Ninja Gaiden-style enemy respawning here as well, combine that with a good amount of slowdown and no way to save your game, and you're in for one loooong playthrough. The Sega Genesis Edition of Demolition Man is nearly identical, but it offers much better performance. Yeah, the jump still sucks, but everything is faster and more intense. Also, the soundtrack just feels like it belongs on Genesis. The SNES music by comparison sounds like it was merely ported from the Genesis Edition because it really sounds muffled. I don't know if that's actually the case, but I do know that Tommy Tallarico of Video Games Live had a hand of creating the music on Genesis, so that's probably why it sounds a lot better. I should mention that the Panasonic 3DO version actually has scenes that were shot exclusively for the game, too, which is kinda interesting. So yeah, Demolition Man on Super Nintendo is fine, I guess? I'm running out of ways to call something a good game, despite it not being that good. Uh, Demolition Man is an okay-ish, average-ish, decent-ish game-ish? It definitely has its problems, but I still had fun playing it. There, does that work? The controls feel stiff when you first play, but at least they're consistent, and hey, every level has plenty of stuff laying around that's primed to explode when you shoot at it. So how can you go wrong with making all this stuff go boom, or should I say making everything a murder-death kill? I do think the Sega Genesis game is a bit better, and if you dig that and you want even more Demolition Man content, then you'll want to check out the Sega CD version, as well, since that edition is pretty much identical, but with a CD quality soundtrack and tons of scenes lifted straight from the movie. Regardless, if you're sticking with the Super Nintendo, which, you know, I tend to do for some reason, then that version of Demolition Man is perfectly fine, too. I mean, hey, it beats trying to figure out how to use the three seashells. Alright, I want to thank you for watching, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.