Its more of my analysis on topics related to Outsourcing, Business, IT, Economy, Entrepreneurship, Positive thoughts, Book & Product reviews and Social causes
I am a sofware management professional, also PMP certified.
A post graduate in management and hold a degree in computer engineering with about 20 years of post degree work experience.
Email id : m.guharajan@yahoo.com
In a leading new paper in the property section there are pages and pages of advertisement about upcoming real estate property projects.
Interestingly, majority of these upcoming apartment are miles away from city even in most cases, its kilometres away from main highway. Was wondering as whether these property are to be considered as Home or Farm house for short stay?.
Even within city, when there are so much infrastructure woes, what would be in store for residents staying in such far away place?.
In developed countries, even if residential settlement are quite far away from the city, the general infrastructure will be in place, before the government provides approval for residential settlement. In India its reverse, one would find residential settlement which costs a fortune and the pricing comparable to a developed country, unfortunately you may not find the even the basic infrastructure, once you step out of these upcoming residential complex.
With big budgeted movies in Bollywood failing in box office, I was wondering, is it time to rethink on film business model?.
If one looks a film industry couple decades back, film was the only entertainment for the public. TV was not a big entertainer, color TV was just venturing in and public had to content with Doordarshan, hence public did not have much options and added to it unlike now, film tickets which are are sold at Rs 150~200 plus, the film tickets were priced at about Rs 20 earlier. Naturally, people were inclined to visit theatres for entertainment.
If you look at a situation now, for family to watch a movies, a family of 4 might have to spend about Rs 1000 which includes ticket, car parking and some munching. Nowadays, TV has all features of a home theatre & a fine print DVD are available at cheaper price. Off course, one has to stop movie piracy, which is not an easy job, to me its something like asking a person to come to bank to withdraw money and to avoid using ATM.
Why not the film industry look at producing what the customer wants? I meant, can a film producer produce a short movie for 1 hour and sell it in a DVD format priced at Rs 100. There are DVD/CD copy protection encryption software, which can prevent copying and more over if it priced at Rs 100, further its may not worth the effort for coping low priced media illegally. Producer can think of getting corporate sponsorship, just like India TV serials and for sure for these movie story value and entertainment is important, rather than hero, heroine or songs or 3 unnecessary fight. Further, I don't think distribution is a challenge for DVD formatted movies, when pre-paid sim card can be sold in a small shop, why not these DVD. There need to be some marketing effort and the producers can look at some innovations, like using blogger.
If film industry want to attract public to theaters the better option is to produce movies like 'Avatar' which might not have the same visual effect when watched on TV, in which case definitely public will opt for theater.
Well, with real estate pricing having gone up by 200~400% over the last few years, the business viability of theater itself can be a question mark.
Quite recently, one of my colleague told about this funny short movie, hope you would enjoy it too, particularly if you understand Tamil. This has all the ingredient of what I was thinking about short movie and may be the producer has not sold it commercially, as embed code was available in youtube & their website.
IBM has announced that it will be establishing 75 new Centers of Excellence (CoE) at engineering colleges across 60 cities in India. Last year also the vendor had set- up over 75 such CoEs across the country. Spread across 20 states these new CoEs will be selected from the top 300 engineering colleges in India.
The IBM CoEs are aimed at creating a platform for the development of software skills among the students and to offer them an opportunity to acquire new skill sets around IBM software. Apart from providing training, certification and software which is free of charge to these colleges, IBM plans to take the CoEs to the next logical level of converting them into Incubation Centers, to bolster software skills and ensure industry-ready professionals.
IBM is looking to bring its Global Entrepreneurship Initiative (GEI) to some of these colleges. This initiative has produced around 10,000 certified candidates from the various CoEs. The number is expected to increase by 6000 certified candidates in 2010.
To me this looks to be a great intiative and an untapped sector which could produce wonders. Normally, the student would be enthusiatic to learn and can be much innovative particularly during the final year project and this could turn out to be a win-win situation between colleges and industry at a low cost. In West, most of the innovation orginates from college due to institute and industry collobaration, unfortunately, so far, this has been the missing link in India.
This will also pave way to building up entreprenuership culture. Will other corporates follow this trend?
I read an article in online magazine about individual financial health, looked very sensible hence sharing the same with the readers
Keep also in mind, some amount of money need to be kept as contigency for emergency. The amount of money kept aside as contigency can vary according to age, if you are at the start of the your career and employed, then probably 2~3 month should be enough, as you are bound to be flexible and adaptable. If you are in 40's 6~12 month of expenses have to kept aside and if you are in 50's 1~3 years. However, there is no specific formula on contigency, only thought is that when you are young, not much of responsibilities and hence can roam the world but as we get more mature adaptability & learning skills diminishes though we might gain wisdom over the years.
Further, this amount need to be kept on the liabilities side for better calculation of the net worth.
This post is in continuation of my earlier post, If you have not read my earlier post you can read the same here
Indian Economy was in a pretty bad shape in early 90's, many public sector promoted post independence turned loss making one . This is primarily because since India was a closed economy, the companies had not bother much to improve them self on the technology front and were more complacent. I still remember those days, when people use to wait for 7 years after booking a Bajaj scooter or pay a premium to get through alternative means, get a land line was even more worse, the wait was endless. Well, "it was owner pride, neighbours envy", whenever a home had Bajaj scooter, TV and phone. Since it was considered as a luxury, as pay scales was almost 1/10 of what people used to get these days.
In early 90's , Indian Government was facing the balance of payment crisis and with high debt in place, it had to pledge gold to IMF towards loans, this was been the starting point towards globalization. Terms were put in place towards Economic reforms, which called for liberalization of foreign companies to make investment and operate in India to facilitate their operation import custom duty were reduced across the board starting in 90's. This paved the way to foreign companies to start operation in India. Indian companies were either acquired and went out of operation, there were more companies which went out of operation rather been acquired. There were lot more pain particularly when companies go out of operation as the promoter lost their money, employee lost their job and Bank started accumulating the non performing assets. So I would say 90's was the pain period for India, though there was growth, in some form or other.
Apart from technology, it was money power which made Indian made companies to vanish. The cost of capital in developed economy was much cheaper as compared to India, the bank interest rates where in the range of 18% to 21%, whereas foreign grown companies can get this capital with interest rate of less than 5 %. Naturally, very few Indian companies associated with strong capital and a good product mix where able to compete with foreign operated companies. The early nineties was a transition period and off course India did grow with foreign investment brought inside India. As India progressed into the later part of 90's, US were looking for severe shortage of people towards the computer hence came the H1 visa and this was followed by outsourcing activity to Offshore as cost cutting measure, so called optimization of cost.
At the same time, if you look at the high end FMCG market we had multi national companies operating, Indian companies vanished and so was the slogan 'BE INDIAN, BUY INDIAN'. From 2005, onwards, foreign invested companies found operating in India and elsewhere in the developing economies more competitive as compared to their operation in developed countries. Interestingly, there were statement from developed economies like 'We want to create jobs in Buffalo, rather than Bangalore', we need to see whether this really takes off, as the developed economies are under severe stress now.
Well, the world is getting flatter and small, with telecommunication facilities, faster transport it does not matter whether goods and services are offered from a developed nation or from under developed nation. As long as prices are competitive and the consumer is in position to get comparable quality and features, they would naturally opt for the best. Ultimately, Darwin theory holds good " Survival of the fittest".
As a school going kid in 1970~80's in city I never dreamt, one day, I need to buy water by paying cash. The independent houses those days had well or a bore well water were available in less than 30 feet depth. With population explosion, wells dried up and so even the bore well, people were at look out for alternative which led to water tanker business initiative by some enterprising people.
Take a look at this video clipping.
Frightening is isn't it?, though we might not be fish, we can't live without water for more than a day!. Pure water & Pure air are the real assets.
Need for water in metro increased by leaps and bound due mushrooming of apartment in later 1990's & 2000's and now, most of the apartments are dependent on water tanker for even normal usage like bathing, washing. Each one of us has social responsibility to conserve water, its beyond one imagination as what would be situation to our children or grand children in 20 years from now as already the water tanker are fetching water 20 km from suburbs of the city. With city boundary itself growing with more exploitation of ground water, do the water feeds go beyond 50 KM from city in the years to come?. Surprisingly, most of us think about creating materialistic assets for future generation and but unfortunately, we seem to neglect water conservation.
Apart from water, we are responsible for polluting the environment. As per state pollution control boards, the air pollution is beyond the reasonable means, particularly CO in the central business districts of most of the Indian cities. The main reason is CO emission from vehicles.
Conserve: Water and Petroleum needs to be conserved by all possible means. I meant petroleum, as it main cause for air pollution. For petroleum, every one thinks about using bicycle, bus or car pooling to office. The new concept, which is catching up in the IT sector is 'WFH' - work from home. With Internet, communication becoming cheaper and faster these days, IT sector people has the option to 'work from home'. With IT sector employer, who now adays play important role in corporate social responsibility need to look at the option and promote 'work from home' culture effectively for its employee. This will go a long way for employees to avoid using vehicles to reach office, thereby reduce pollution and save foreign exchange drain for India as well.
Similarly, water, which need to be considered precious apart from conserving, it is one which can recycled. One can think of using bath, kitchen outlet water to gardens, this would be the simple and most effective to "Go-Green". I also believe conserving water is quite common sense. Countries like Dubai, Singapore still prosper without much of natural resource. Monsoon rain in cities like Mumbai and Chennai pours and streets get mostly flooded, but unfortunately rain water on the street get drained into the sea.... whom to blame and a thought to ponder over?. If there not a effective water to store it?
The next paramount issue is, pollution emission from petroleum vehicles, there are also indication petroleum product will get totally depleted in 20~30 years, is there an alternative?. I believe, both problems can be effectively addressed through solar energy, when solar power panel can be put use for generating electricity the same can be used for electric vehicles as well. India does have its own manufacturer electric car in form of 'Reva', interestingly Mahindra have invested recently in Reva Electric Car Co Ltd., we need to see more such initiate from auto manufacturers towards discovery of such environment friendly vehicles. India is fortunate enough to have sunshine all through the year and some how, I feel we sometime keep missing the opportunity to effectively harness solar energy .
I believe an individual role in conservation, recycle or discover of the previous assets I had mentioned is very limited, it has to be an united movement from the society for result. Our forefather showed the direction for unity like 'Quit India movement' or 'Be Indian, Buy Indian'. Similar movement has to happen toward preserving these assets, before its becomes too late.
The initiative for this post is blogadda contest drive on conserve, recycle, discover towards world environment day on June 5 in partnership with Pring00
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When one thinks about weekend get aways, normally what come to one mind is malls or the theme park. In the last few years the mall culture has grown leaps and bounds in all metros. Yes, offcourse, its nice to get all your shopping done, get into a movie theatre and finally get across to food court to choose from multi cuisine joint. Well, it looks sweet for one day outing. Unfortunately the reality seems to be different.
As you drive towards enterance of the mall, the first surprise that greets you will be " Sir, only valet parking available". The immediate thought comes to your mind would be, is there any valuables in the car and will my car be safe?, with little hesitation you hand over the key to mall agent and he provides you with parking slip, which normally has a clause which states, " we are not responsible for any loss or damage to the car". As you get into the mall, car safety is always at the back of the mind. If you getting into the food court during lunch or dinner, you should be counting your luck to have a peaceful meal. The first objective would be to get a table, well, it would be a musical chair and you got to use your logistics mind, meaning look at a table where the occupants are about to finish (foods stock on table to be depleted!) and once you get the table you feel you have achieved the mission. Don't forget to leave your friend or family member at the table, before look out for food.
The next mission would be to bring foods stock on the table and for sure all the famous food joint outlet would be crowded, the counter service boys would be acting as though they are the "king" and don't be surprised, if you find a wall hanging which states "Customer is the King". Finally, you get some food, which looks "yummy" and get back to your table, start having your food, you will now have two more surprises waiting. One, the food is semi cooked and not tasty and you already having another set of people waiting and staring at you, thinking, when you would get lost from the table.
Its now time to get into the parking lot, you hand over the car token to mall agent to fetch your car, the first attempt , they will search for keys and if successful, they will search for the car and you end up waiting about 30 minutes. "Hurray", that would be the feeling when you sight your car and finally as you drive out of the mall, you would be stopped and you hear a voice " Rs 100" for parking, well a good way to end the wee(a)k end.
As you start driving back home, you realise, it would have been much more peaceful at home with just a cup of curd rice. Hmmm... habit die hard, after few days of monotony, you are ready for the next visit to the mall.
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